Pearl fever

I do not carry a memory, lucid or truthful, of the moment I arrived at this place. Nor of the first time or the ones that came after. And if I had one, it would not be such a prodigious one. Perhaps it was forgetfulness, perhaps it was disinterest; but it slipped away never to return. Thus, the only remembrance that I embrace is a deceit. One that I repeat until it is left aside that, with fatuous mood, only I pretend to cram with grandiloquence this common infamy I am about to tell.

It was long ago, in night tainted with dreams. On a ship, an iron beast, with men that spoke tongues that had never been heard here before. They wore silks and leathers for clothes, and gold and wounds for armors. Some had eyes of heaven, others of hate. One of them, full of wealth and delusions, bribed the captain of the vessel; and owner of a petty mistrust, hid me where even he did not know how to find me.

There, he was given a room afar from the crowd; and adventured with promises of conquest and exoticism, he imagined with fervor a world of insolence. Nonetheless, it came to his understanding, that its undisclosed amulet could be the end of it all. He closed his eyes, blinded by his own greed. And as he kept silent, he thought the big lie might disappear, like a flame in the wind.

Captive in his fear, he sang to the moon every night, hymns, and blasphemies, with withered voice and tongue of dead water. The stars were a painful company, shining bright but afar, unable to rescue him from his own fate. And after a short warning, his secret became in him thirst and despair. Quicksand, a desert above him. And before a new sun rose, he perished from the high seas without seeing a piece of this earth. Fresh meat, old folk.

Upon arrival, I passed door to door, from bed to bed. I went through windows, floors, and crosses. Without invitation, I entered the soul of their homes, their hearts, their voices. Bourgeois, proletarians and dispossessed, without prudence or modesty, cradled me in their bosom, nauseous, delirious. I was fire in their loins, acid in their veins. Among mills and storms, I was a poisonous lover, venomous snake, poured into their spirits of heroes, of villains, of men. Mirage between their shaking legs, hands, panting, frenzy. And in a stifled sigh, sorceress spider, I became legend in their truce.

I silenced the harmonious sleep of newborns. Soaked in sweetness, in their scent of tenderness, I took their kindness, their warmth. The illusion of new life. Women, angels, and harpies fell in the streets and cursed my name a thousand times, their jaws full of thunder and tempest. Insidious and gentle, in time, I silenced them too. From their words I neither drank nor sowed. I never knew of victories, nor of revenge. Excessive, petulant, I flooded their entrails, their rivers, their seas. I was the tide wave in their eyes, wells of sorrow, of dread.

At night, men of faith whispered my name, doubtful, of themselves and of others. Their pleas became an obsession, a shout of pain. That the wind would carry me away, that God would carry me away. Holy water like a spell. My presence was divine wrath, the punishment for betrayal. The desolation of a worldly life, where one lied with the same mouth that professed love. And they thought I would forget, but I remembered. Oh yes, I remembered. And I took them too. It was not revenge, nor satisfaction. I never wanted to be an idol; I only know immolation.

Many pursued me, with prayer on their lips and fire in their fists. Their suspicion and dismay escaped through the corners of their burnt teeth; boiled by bitterness, poverty, passion. I hid in the air, among butterflies and partridges. In their hope, at their mercy. They chased me, but I was always with them. In the faint kisses, in the innocent caress. I never left. For I am not carved in stone, but in flesh. My cry is trapped in the throat, and I am reborn in every gasp, in every pulse. Tick-tock, tick-tock, I am the dynamite ready to explode. No sparks, no bang!

My essence was a mantra that everyone chanted. Any bravery was a false step, a daring of no return. And even if there were deserted streets and hills, everything was full of me. In their minds, in their skins. In every tear shed, in every cursed word. I became their twilight, their dawn. A torn coat, a fragile roof. The acid rain melting memories, longings, even uncertainty. The fog that did not blind but strangled.

I saw the last ones taking refuge around the fire, in the combustion of their pain. The last words did not calm their pain, exposed in the absence of certainty. Of salvation that did not come. I saw their eyes turn to smoke, ashes and ice. Skin of rocks, volcanoes, their piled-up bodies were titans. A mountain of death. In the darkness, suffocated and vibrant, I plunged into their tender, cold, fatal magma, dripping away, forever. Corpses like matches in an ashtray; the pantheon of the ever-dying, blown by oblivion. Inflammable, flashing, like light through glass, I set everything on fire. I made it dust, I made it salt.

I do not carry a memory, lucid or truthful, of the moment I arrived at this place. I saw so many succumb in this port at the end of the world, as I did before; hence, this reminiscence of mine could be a tall tale, a envision of something the universe invented beyond itself. Suspended in time and space, I am not light or shadow, nor good or evil. I was born dead, and I also had to bury myself. Infinite, everlasting, I go and return, like ocean foam, like a shooting star.