Ourobouros

You walk into the square of light
afforded us by the window.
You go from sepulchral to bronze
in three steps or less and I am
mute as virgin marble in an
impossible hall. Remember yourself this way, I silently
wish for you, but wishes are waterlogged things.
So you will forget all of

this before I can even note
your passing into the kitchen
where you are flesh once more and no
longer kicking down the doors
of heaven demanding with your
limbs graceful as whale bone to be
noticed. You dress and then leave.
This was ten years ago and long

still do I have before I can
witness another become light
like you did that day before me.
The closest I've come since is: once
I was struck by lightning in the
clavicle and although I don't
recall all the particulars,
I could swear something like you

was there, deflecting sun off its
shoulders. Another instance to note:
falling asleep at the wheel and
waking half-full of life beneath
a bent highway sign, "Exit Here,"
then, too, did I taste your silver.
Then, too, did I feel not enough.
Do you ever see me through

a lens too weak to capture my
shape accurately? Memory
is a half-hearted archivist,
but does he bring you scraps of me?
An elbow? An uneven eye?
My ethnic scent? The madness of
my sleep? (O, calisthenic dreamer!)
You are married now to a man

you would have hated ten years back.
Is the heart a snake that devours
itself? Have you bitten to the
part where I'm the villain? Ten years
from today you will wake up lost
for me. Ten years from today I'll
remember that day differently:
You walk into the fire of

day afforded by the window.
Frozen momentarily there,
I see you clearly for the first
time. You're as cruel in the mouth as
tree bark. I remember daily
injustices doled by your hand.
I bristle over the thought of
your skin on mine. Forget this, I

silently wish for myself. But
wishes are half-hearted vessels
built for failure like a wax-winged
phoenix, rising from the ashes
only to go tumbling hackles
over talons back to the dust.

Back Home

Normal Restrepo's wife killed herself in the most distressing way. Late in the evening, after he had gone to sleep, she sneaked out of bed and back into her day clothes. She walked all the way back into our tiny village, as they lived several kilometers outside of it, and let herself into Normal's butcher shop.

Normal was really named Frederico. I don't remember why or when everyone started calling him Normal and I've known him since we were seven. He isn't extraordinarily plain nor is he so exceptionally strange that the word normal should serve as an irritating joke that refuses to become irrelevant. Curiously, however, its origin has. I suppose it's just one of those things that simply is because it always has been. Similarly, my grandfather was nicknamed Freight but could never recall a reason why. Nobody in our family had ever worked in the transport business nor had an overwhelming affinity for it.

At the butcher shop, Normal's wife sliced herself horizontally at the wrists and on both sides of her throat with the cleaver. She then leaped off the single story roof of the shop, leaving behind a quirky trail of blood detailing her path from around the front counter, dawdling near the drain momentarily (possibly considering a courteous suicide before opting for one with more panache) and finally heading up the rotting back ladder to the roof. Both her ankles were broken in the fall and she dragged herself almost 50 meters before stopping forever just short of the central park.

Normal receded into the bottle the way most loving husbands in his situation would have. And I moved into Bogota shortly thereafter to work at Incré Diseño, a well-known architectural firm. I told, and still tell, this gruesome story with embarrassing frequency, but didn't have the right ending for several years. New friends or barroom acquaintances would blink back at me and ask, "Well, what happened next?"

In 1997, returning home for my uncle's funeral, I ran into Normal outside the hardware store where Doña Echevarria used to sell homemade slingshots. Normal looked good and fat. Much better than he had looked in the months after his wife's death all those years ago. He asked me if I remembered the slingshots and how we could never quite master them enough to hit anything with accuracy, the way our fathers claimed they had when they were children. I barely had a chance to think about it when he added, "Also, I solved the mystery of Paola's suicide."
I said, "I remember," in response to the slingshots, not really having a chance to register his grisly addendum.
"She was possessed by the devil," he said, "no butcher's wife would ever use a cleaver for a slice job."
I nodded, "You're absolutely right."