Banchet

I couldn’t help but to think of my mother, the opinions she’d have about my choice of side dish, surely she’d think it’s inadequate, she always pride herself on giving very balanced meals and, in some curious way that seemed to only made sense in her head, make those meals to fit every guest in a specific way; as a recurrent guest I never had any complain on the infinite meals she placed in front of me, but as an extension of her I have the little grouse on how that part of her genetics didn’t manage to manifest on me, being that why now I’m setting up this generic banquet, were all the love and concern about the guests is placed on other stuff, and the whole act in itself is a simple fulfillment of something inevitable.

With a heavy sigh I put my mom’s memory in the back of my head, of my emotions, because thinking about her is thinking about her last moments as well and even though the years have gone by, the pain hasn’t and the vision of her smiling face turns into an agonizing one that prevents me from carrying on. Is better to leave the past in the past, is better to focus on the present, is better to dedicate yourself to the preparation of this meal and find some sort of peace in the acceptance of something I’ve been running away from for so long.

I’m not entirely sure how it’s been possible, I’ve counted with the kindness of many people, acquaintances and strangers alike, people who’s faces have blended one with the other in my mind, making some type of immense communal face of goodness, and it isn’t that I didn’t fully appreciate them so I don’t remember them specifically, is just that the perilous and desirous nature of reality keeps you from being able to hold on to details and emotions for too long, at least with all those new pseudo relationships you keep stumbling with day by day; in the beginning you tried, because when you face the world as an independent being you feel it’s your duty to let the record show the proper education you received back home, so you try to be attentive, smile, remember, offer everything you have and, eventually, pour your share of tears for what you lose, but as time goes by, as the aridity of daily life weathers your physical and emotional skin, you begin to throw all the tenderness to hell and focus on being, on staying, on helping as long as it serves you as well, you smile to yourself more than to others and the well of tears runs dry and between you and the world there’s only a sterile relationship based on a principal of practicality and, why not just accept it, opportunism. Long gone are the times were you tried to sell the best version of yourself, there’s no more buyers, you’re fully aware of the bitter rawness of a world that only knows to suffer or to devour.

I laugh on the low, this moments of enlightenment are curious , I used to live quite disconnected from everything, thinking about rosy futures, planning as if I had the certainty of the state of the world, believing everything was there waiting for me. Well, I don’t think I was the only one, otherwise things wouldn’t have gotten so bad, but to be fair, nobody thought this sort of things were possible, at least not in this scale, that type of scenarios were legends, children’s stories, tales with neither rhyme nor reason that the ones that knew, or were supposed to know, disqualified constantly. In the end we all thought we knew more than we really did, we had an absurd sense of security and confidence entirely based on our our stories about brilliance and greatness. And now nothing, now this, nobody bothers any longer to understand the why or the how when you’re so busy trying not to succumb. I say it because of what I’ve seen, in me, on all the other fleeting ones, for the growing disenchantment with which every new day receives you, until you decide you’ve had enough.

I’ve had enough.

That’s why I completely separated from all those familiar figures, I stopped running and looking for temporal shelter and solace from a permanent pain. I’ve made peace with my exhaustion, with my shortcomings, with the new certainty of not being able to imagine anything at all about the future, I asked for forgiveness to all those memories of those I decided to keep intact in my mind and, even though I don’t know how to do it or if it’s even possible, I hope for some glimpse of mercy in regards of my resolution.

In the middle of this big house that belongs to whoever enters it, I keep organizing a salad out of rotten tomatoes, slimy lettuce and surprisingly fresh spinach on a huge bowl of cut crystal; the tableware that I picked from the shelves has golden lines that create interesting patterns and look quite nice over the lace tablecloth, even if it’s dusty and gnawed. I put a bit of salad on every plate and the never ending parade of cutlery on each side, I never knew with what or when to use them, but they add some sense of elegance to the scene that I think is totally worth it. I place the seats around the table and with silent agility I go to the door and open it widely. With the same discretion I go back to the table and climb on top of it, laying my body right in the middle, cautiously, trying not to ruin what I carefully created.

I take a deep breath and let out a piercing scream, and then another, and another one, and again, until the burning in my throat is so deep that keeps me from making any other sound. It isn’t necessary anymore anyway, I hear them getting close, I hear their guttural uproar, their unconscious and insatiable rush. They come through the door, the windows, through every hole in the house, like a ferocious swarm, and they ignore the side dish, the salad flies in the air along with the dishes and the cutlery while the fastest ones throw themselves over the main course, over me, as I close my eyes and surrender, like a counterfeit Jesus, so they can eat my body and drink my blood, not to save themselves but to save me from all the misery, to erase my existence with their voracity and allow me to reunite again with all of those that, unwillingly, were devoured before me by this horde of unfathomable beings that without a doubt will end up ravaging the entire earth. There’s no more resistance in me, no longer lives in me any other dream but the one of the eternal rest from all this running and stubbornly trying to escape the inevitable.

Tears fill up my eyes, tears of pain and a bit of hope, of joy, the chow of my body won’t fill the black holes of their gluttony, but my disappearance, bite by bite, will fulfill the hunger of my starving soul.