Titika’s Wings: The Short Space

A year ago I was walking among women dressed in green and purple. Scarves, hats, blankets, photographs, loudspeakers, smoke, songs, shouts, crying, slogans, silence … I among them, amid the tumult, advanced without direction. My sight was lost between his eyes, between the sound of his pain, of his rage. I was barricaded between the curtain of a newsstand; the crowd prevented me from continuing. I was next to two teenagers with terrified looks, they did not know what was next, neither did I … no one suspected that in a week we would be locked up, confined within our own walls. No one knew that this would be the last open call for help; united between jacarandas and the spring sun.

From the street we went to the walls, to the brief interior space. The aggressor was confined to pleasure; he felt marked, hurt, exhibited; he was more cruel. So they, so me. Each with its own cry. No one knew how to silence him; he was a total stranger. Recommendations began; those far away that nobody attends when they are strangers. There was no rush, I was playing all of them in different ways. The ailments and mistreatment were distributed between physical discomfort, headaches, temperature and rash in the throat … the blows hurt, the breath was short.

A year has passed … the contained rage returned to the streets. The metal wall was filled with flowers; a memorial with their names; at night it was set on fire by other “them”. The next day everything remained the same, except for the brief space. Each interior lost something, someone, everything. She lost intimacy: another came to badly accompany her; He had long since lost the compass and his good being, now, for the sake of compassion, he wanted to mend the loneliness of others, that which must be heard, felt and accommodated to one’s own understanding. It couldn’t be like that; the noise continued and the fire appropriated them.

“T” had his world taken away. He did not understand devices, online communication, encrypted messages, but confinement, that word that is assumed with an end, as a prelude to a silent break, left everything in sight. The culprit was the phone, that little black box full of surprises. He left everything in sight; the secret was exposed in images. There was no need to go out, to inquire, to ask like someone trying to discover something. He cursed it. He wanted to throw him, trample him, erase him from his life, destroy him, but when he saw her … he felt his heart set on fire.

He knew that home is often the most unsafe place to dwell. He understood that the lack of outside noise ended his world; the one that he had built based on rules and respect. The daze of the confinement was taking her to this unknown place, to the excruciating short space that she had always resisted. I couldn’t find the street. She was withdrawn, full of fear, in an interior that was beginning to show her how indifferent she usually is to life itself. His evil was within. He needed the distant recommendation to stay and, by dint of fate, to listen to what he had always been and what, despite everything, he knew he would be again …

I thought that the confinement would change me, that life would show me the great truths, those that are worthwhile, those that make you recognize your mistakes and make amends. My neighbor did, she did get the trap. He says that he has learned to respect and value others. Honestly, it didn’t do me any good. My loss has been so great that I am again the same conceited with the same old and hackneyed speech as always.

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