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In the morning
Marianne Díaz Hernández
(Posted in Letralia No. 187)

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,

and these the last verses that I write. "
Pablo Neruda ("Poem 20").

She had finally learned again how to sleep in the middle of the huge double
bed, almost diagonally, in a fetal position simulating an impossible hug, devoid of
content. Thus, such learning was not an improvement on recent times, compared to
the custom of having a half in bed, because that was his, and this hers, as if an
invisible boundary demarcation prevented her from crossing the border end of a
relationship that no longer existed. Instead, it was a setback, from the first time,
from that time they slept so close that it wasn't possible to pass a thread between
their bodies. She hugged a pillow now, and remembered his smell of damp earth, of
fresh baked bread, ofhome, until tears flooded her eyes.

She would have given anything to sleep that night in his arms.

But what mattered now, she thought, if also, after all, it was not about one or
the other wanting to leave or return. It simply was no longer possible, and they
both knew it. She would have liked to feign insanity, claiming that they still could
try again, one more time. She would have wanted, at least, yield to the physical
needs, search again between both an imitation of love, but it made no sense. The
perfect link that had existed between their bodies responded to the perfect fit that
there wasn't anymore between their souls. That's so corny, she thought.But love is
corny, what else could she do.

Love, or the remains of love, or the ruins of love after an earthquake. A sort
of tsunami, rather, that had swept everything in its path. Or better, a nuclear war,
that not content with destroying everything, had left behind an uninhabitable
territory where nothing new could be built.
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She gradually realized she was awake, and opening her eyes, made an effort
to focus their gaze on the LCD alarm clock. Amid the impenetrable darkness, a
fluorescent green numbers flashed ensuring it was 2:23 am.

Any hour, she thought.

Any hour of any night on any given day when, within just four hours, she
would have to get up to punctually go to her any work, void, banal. Have no effect
on the known universe. A job that frustrated her because it could both be done or
undone and nothing happened, nothing minor or catastrophic, as long as she
timely complied with her times of entry and exit.

Which would become difficult, if she persisted in keeping herself awake.

Frustration. She had come to know so well that word, in all its possible flats
and linguistic conjugations, that she could not but admit that it was an inseparable
part of his life. She closed her eyes to enter consciously in the darkness that
enveloped her, and inside her mind produced a three-dimensional, natural scale
representation of her tiny apartment. Studio, an euphemism that meant there were
no more than four barely habitable walls where all the functions of a home should
be gathered.Home, she repeated in her mind, and the mere word made her laugh,
one of those bitter laughters that's more like a snort.Home was what she thought
would have with him, the reason why she lived in that box of matches, the cozy and
well-lit apartment that she should already have -would have had- to date. The place
where she could devote herself to write her silly stories, the place where her books
would have their own corner, where a big-eyed girl would play on the floor while
she drew. An impossible place in a non-existent universe, she said again. Not non-
existent, she corrected. Parallel Even better, overlayed. A universe where
everything was as it should have been, and she was probably happy, or at least she
had everything to be it. It was just that that universe was not this one.

Schrödinger's cat, all over again.

If only I could make a deal with God, she discovered herself thinking, in
Spanish.
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Remains of the damage caused by pop culture, she said laughing at herself.
Those two years of Art History at Berkeley had made further danger: the mixing
phrases, words and thoughts in English and Spanish, and translating things into a
language when they were in another. As he had done with the song without
realizing she'd done it.

Too soon she realized that she was trying to dodge her central thought. Make
a deal with God, if it exists, to jump to one of these other universes, or to turn back
time and do things differently, to get a new chance. None of this was possible, of
course. Even Schrödinger didn't seriously considered that there was more of a cat,
as Einstein also didn't spoke about the feasibility of building a time machine. One
thing is science and another science-fiction.

She imagined a time machine, and a wilderness present for a humanity full
of errors constantly returning to the past to correct them, to have new
opportunities, to catch a future that could no longer be.

A barbarity, she said, a disaster. Perhaps a good topic for a story.

But she did not write anymore. All her inspiration -even though his teacher,
an amazing guy with a lot of books and awards to his credit, insisted that such a
thing was nothing but a fallacy- seemed to have vanished along with her hopes. She
wasn't one of those tormented writers who produced more and better literature
when they are suffering. She, on the other hand, needed peace.

She would have given anything to sleep that night between his arms.

She turned in bed until she was lying, facing up, straight, parallel to the edge
of the mattress (mattress, matrix, she thought, a logical explanation of why so
many sleep in fetal position), an uncomfortable position in which she known she
was unable to sleep, and yet adopted.She stared at the darkness that stretched over
her, where it should be the ceiling. One assumed that the roof was there. It didn't
have why not to be. But she soon discovered believing that, just as once the ground
had disappeared beneath her feet, nothing will guarantee that the roof continued to
be there, behind that impenetrable blackness that was the same as having your eyes
closed, to be immersed in the depths of sleep.
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Actually it didn't matter.

He had asked for the greater proof of love he could demand: he had asked
her to leave. And she did. More precisely, she vanished. As if she was fading as she
moved through life, as if the pace of things was running her down like a battery.
That was, she had found it: she was a battery, slowly failing, a battery in a cassette
player (-you revealed your age, "Yes, she said and she answered) which suddenly
begins to sound distorted, every time the volume lower, slower, until one can not
understand the music and eventually it's off.

She had gone out. She had not stopped, still worked by inertia, with a sort of
residual energy that was used for movement, but she wasn't able to give more than
that. To imagine, to make plans, to feel any emotion other than sadness. Or
whatever that was. She didn't know. She only knew it oppressed her chest with
something akin to tears. She knew she was cold, no matter how many blankets
covered her up. It's so cold in here. The cold, the ice, the night, are blue.Also
sadness.

She would have, she sweared, anything, to sleep that night between his arms.

But there was something, some sort of invisible fence, which stood between
them. A sort of Chinese wall of glass through which they both looked, longing,
those who they use to be and no longer were. She looked into his eyes. There was
nostalgia, there was a desire to grab the world and put it upside down if that made
them recover a bit of happiness. But there was also resignation and fatigue.

The resignation is one of the strongest emotions that exist, she said. It leaves
you exhausted and lying on the ground, unable to move. Against the ropes. Tirado.
Tired.She, at least, have been already counted ten and knew that there was nothing
to get up now.

He, however, didn't seem to want to get up. What for.

Outside it slowly began to dawn. At any time, the alarm would mark 6:00 am
with fluorescent numbers and begin to emit an intolerable scream that sought to
get one out of the dream by fair means or foul. She thought of turning it off to avoid
this hassle, however, she was already awake. But she had no intention to move.
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With disappointment she made sure that it almost didn't hurt anymore. That
was something he never would have understood. As much as she tried to explain it
a million times, he did not understand the pain that love brings implied was a price
she was willing to pay for the happiness it could give. He never understood. And
maybe that influenced the fact he would have preferred to leave it like that, without
pain or glory.

She finally understood the expression. That was it, that place, that way of life
where she was trapped. Without pain and without glory. No grief, no pleasure.
Without sadness or joy. Only those tears caught in the chest, which rather than a
lament were a kind of mourning.

Grief is called luto, which also means pain.But in mourning, is said de

luto.In mourning, in the morning.

It had already dawned. She realized that the sun began to rise on the
horizon, which meant it would soon be late. She looked at the clock. It was off.
Probably it was out of batteries. She forced herself to get up, because she had a job
waiting for her, a real work and a real life that did not understand quantum
possibilities. She had awakened again in the same universe as ever, and she did not
ask, because she already knew, that nothing had been a nightmare.