Snow on a Cherry Blossom

The world has become quieter, in a way, so to speak. From all those colorful noises that stay in our mind all the time. A deafening breath in the mind. What do I do with all this mental space I have left now? Since I gave up filling it with self-pity, I've had to get used to the silence of the mind. There are times when I get closer to his breathing just to feel the clearer presence of another life here in the apartment and fill that void. Yes, because there was only him and me left in the apartment since the plants weren't noticeable enough. One day my sister, infuriated, declared “I can't take it anymore, that's enough, stop! Stop watering these plants, they've been dead for months. I can't stand to see this anymore!”.

I could feel her heavy sigh and her right hand lightly hitting her right leg when it was dropped – typical of when she is upset, but wants to return to her 'inner peace'. She throws one hand over her leg, clamps the fingers of the other hand over her nose near her forehead, lifts her head up, but instead of looking at the ceiling, she closes her eyes and sighs. Strong, impatient with herself. I can see it clearly in my memory now. I had always been irritated by those attacks of her, this time I laughed. Whether because I was disappointed in the false belief that I would never see her in that scene again, whether because now I can be more patient with her, after all, she had had so much patience with me in the last few months. Maybe it was because I just don't care anymore, it's too little to care.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to say that. I'm sorry I got mad, it's not your fault, of course not, I'll bring new plants. Live, live plants. I should have done it a long time ago, you wouldn't even need to know, I don't know why I yelled like that” she paused, sighing in disappointment “I should have just changed the plants and not said anything”. She talked a lot and very fast in those days, she gestured a lot too, she sat down, she got up right away, fixing something that she thought was messy, sometimes something that I was going to use next. “Don't worry about it, I don't think I need them anymore. I just didn't want them to die from rejection, but I think it's too late for that.” When I remembered some other life existing besides mine, it was too late for much. How careless of me, thinking I cared about those plants, but how many months did I go without touching them not to notice that they were no longer alive? We pretend, even to ourselves, to be a good human being. I didn't really care about those plants, I just wanted to believe that I did, and wasted water on the earth in an automatic routine. An automatic routine of life.

My sister hugged me and said goodbye, almost as if she had received an order: “Okay, okay, I won’t worry, never mind, do you want me to bring you something for lunch?”. “It’s alright, I'll have lunch out, I prefer it that way”. People hugged me all the time now – before, hardly ever. At first it irritated me, that pity disguised as affection... they didn't have affection before, why then? Today I got used to it, I even like it, it's warm, I can feel how people are: “Are you worried today?”, I asked my brother the other day. "No, it's just... it's a matter at work, I don't know how it's going to go…” a pause in which I can almost see the expression of astonishment on his face “but how do you know?". I don't know how I know, I didn't know how I knew, but I knew, I just know that I know… I shrugged without answering.

He is very calm, he was trained to be that way. I hardly hear him inside the apartment. When the front door slams goodbye, I feel the inner silence of the rooms. I look for him, I need to know he's still there. Of course he is, but I need to feel it on my skin, in the air, to make that known presence material. At first, I walked through the rooms until I heard the quiet sound of his breathing and I got closer as the noise got louder. Today I know where he usually lies down, he is very methodical. In the summer he lies down on the tiled floor in the kitchen or bathroom; in other seasons, on my bed or on the sofa in the living room. He usually stays in the room closest to where I am. His bed, a huge “deluxe” type mattress, is always empty.

My sister, who has become extremely hygienic after having three children who seem very unhygienic to me like most children, exploded one day “What is that animal doing in your bed?!!! Get down! Get down!” he got down. It was because she had an old grudge towards her cat from the time we lived with mother – “you never had animals in your bed because of the hair!”. “Only now it doesn't matter anymore, because I can't see the hair anymore, so it doesn't bother me anymore…” I spoke softly, I've learned to speak lower and lower over the last few months because everything has become so loud around me. My sister still hasn't gotten used to it, but she's getting used to it... I used to scream, I fought with her for my voice, but that's not necessary now.

I could hear the weight of the guilty silence in the room. I immediately regretted having spoken that way. I had gotten used to it, forced myself to get used to it, but people still haven't. I felt bad for making her feel bad for me. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for always being so rude to your cat Lisbela. I think I was a very moody teenager” , I took a breath “I think I was a moody teenager too long in my life”. "Ah dear..." she sighed while hugging me, people hugged me a lot now, "you don't need to apologize for anything, I'm the one who apologizes".

It was always like that now, that pernicious condescension. Then it was too much, it needed to be said, I held her in my embrace and whispered close to her ear “You don't always have to forgive me, it wasn't your fault that I went blind. I've made a lot of mistakes and I still do, you can allow yourself to be angry and hurt by me”. Her face wet mine and the unusual silence of her aura showed. She had felt all this time that it was her fault, how could it have taken me so long to realize this and act on it? I had become very selfish those first few months, more so than before. Because she wished I would be blinded in an argument one time. Does wishing harm to someone at an unthinkable moment, and that harm happening fortuitously, make the person who wished it responsible for the harm that occurred? I don't know.... In any case, it was always bad to wish evil, worse if it happened to someone later, even worse if it happened to someone we loved. I could understand her, I would feel bad too, but it wasn't her fault... now she punished herself by taking care of me more. One day she replied that no, she wasn't punishing herself, but taking advantage of the awareness of our existence and of the ephemerality of situations that came with what happened, in order to enjoy each other's company. I accepted that explanation because I liked it, but who was I to accept something or not? Be that as it may. From that day on, her breathing became more serene next to mine and her body movements slowed down and I never saw her not looking at the ceiling and sighing angrily again. Good, I think she was going to eventually develop an ulcer. She stopped complaining about her stomach too.

It was about that time that the snow began to fall all over my soul and change the whole nature of things, then I had that dream of the snow falling in the blossoming cherry tree. The last time I saw completely, in full color, each circular arc in the air of the leaves moving in the wind, as if everything had gone into slow motion and time had faded into non-existence and the seasons had merged into one another in temporary absence. After that, dreams also became just sounds and smells, textures and temperatures. I daydreamed about the day I would dream again with all the colors of life, but it was still early, my subconscious said, and waking memories were never the same.

I still heard her sniffle that day before leaving without another word. I felt her pause at the portal before closing the door on the way out, maybe she was looking back – I was standing in the middle of the room, also not knowing what else to say. Then the door closed. I became a guardian of dead plants, still adapting to myself. Where was he? Lince, my eyes, my golden retriever guide dog? It was hot, but the balcony door was open. He must have been there, I forgot but I remembered that when it was hot and the balcony door was open, he stayed there. On the way there, I picked up the stereo control on the table. I wasn't going to turn it on now because I wanted to hear him. I got closer and the deep snoring filled my world. Was it him snoring too loudly, or was it me who had learned to listen too loudly?

I knelt next to him and laid my head over his, nuzzling his muzzle. It's not very hygienic, I know, but what great harm can it do to me? There was silence in me and the silence of Sunday mornings outside. The world disappeared, temporarily, and I could go back to it whenever I wanted. Before, it wasn't just the landscape that was diluted before my eyes, it was I myself that was diluted in the landscape. Like the objects that were losing the forms that delineated them, I also lost the forms that delineated me in the world. And suddenly I ceased to exist as the world had ceased to exist for me. Everything I didn't see, it was like it didn’t exist and it was like I didn’t exist either, because if I didn't see anyone, nobody could see me... I felt that way, at least.

A deep silence. At first I heard even less than before – not seeing things meant that I couldn't hear them either. I thought I was also becoming deaf, but the doctor clarified: “We associate one sense with the other, we learn to hear while we see, but that will pass, don't worry. In time you will hear even more than you did before.” I didn't believe him, but he was more than accurate. Gradually, a new world was built before my mute eyes. The silence turned into screaming, extreme noises, highs and lows mixed together, all talking at the same time, driving me crazy.

Gradually, however, increasingly specific and personalist noises began to differentiate. My mother's footsteps coming up the stairs of my building, different from anyone else who walked by, slightly similar to my sister's, but unmistakable. The pearls on the classic necklace my father had given her as an engagement gift told me whether she moved to the right or to the left, whether she bent down, whether she turned around, dancing the steps in tune with her. In the kitchen, in the living room, going to check the bathroom and complaining about the cleaning lady who took advantage of ‘my condition’. I had a condition now, an unnamed condition. No one wanted to say it out loud.

Now I felt happy with her there, enjoying every moment of the things I had once wasted. Now that I was learning myself again, the talkative pearls in my mother's necklace were enough to make me smile and feel the peace of life. My mother was there with me, watching out for me because she could never be still and now she had a good reason not to be. My brother, who once or twice a week came to make dinner for me, never complained about the dishes that were poorly washed and that I insisted on continuing to wash. He would wash them later, when I play-acted and went to the bathroom, afraid that I would use dirty dishes the next day. My sister was sighing hard and stirring the whole apartment around her and then not anymore, just sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and telling me about the kids and her husband and work and asking me “how about you?”. She paused gravely, should she say it or not, I could sense it in her thoughts. “How are you?”, she concluded in the serious tone of someone who really wants to know. “I'm fine” and I smile slightly so she can be sure “but today I don't want coffee, I'm going to make some orange juice!”. And her breath is suspended in the air while I take the knife and, by touch, cut three oranges on the cutting board. “Do you want one too?” “No, thank you.” She responded quickly as if to say 'let's get this torturous scene over with'. I would wash the knife and place it on the drying rack, she would breathe again, take a relieved sip of coffee and continue to tell me things that fill me up.

Alone, his breathing was like mine, hot Sunday, the balcony floor is freezing, he is wise. I lay down on his torso, feeling the breath of wind in his lungs, the cold of the floor under my body, the rhythmic pulse of blood pumping, and I turned on the stereo. Requiem, Mozart. It's Sunday, we have time today.... and I smile alone at my life. Where one story ends, another begins.