El Banco (EN)

THE BENCH

All this time, sitting on a bench cracked by loneliness, he had been thinking about her. I am fascinated by that person, so fleeting in his bad reactions, so murky in his gaze.

Why did you have to go to that town in the middle of nowhere?

The truth is that, sitting here, resting my elbow in a surprising and fluffy armrest, I looked at the past with melancholy. I loved her, but there was something else. At the time, I had to get up from the bench and the fog spread throughout my surroundings.

My mind felt free, freed from a weight, escaped my comfort. My heart came up, a feeling of vertigo swept through my insides. I had to escape from that place.

In an effort to return to normal, my steps were directed in the opposite direction of the bank. I wanted to run but I couldn't ... Should I empty my pockets?

My left hand went into that pocket that had to be released. But my fingers felt an excessive emptiness, a colossal energy that unconsciously attracted me. They were no longer my fingers but my entire arm: I was being swallowed by my own pocket and I didn't want to resist.

The fog had already disappeared and the night "lit up" the nothingness. It was impossible to see anything. The moon was burning and my eyes were blinded by darkness. Even so, in the distance there was a beam of fire in an orange atmosphere. I set out to get to that point.

Suddenly, dozens of streetlights lit on my sides, illuminating a perfectly vertical street, completely straight. The lights shone so brightly that I advanced with my eyes looking at the floor, while I noticed that my legs were walking alone, as if they had a life of their own. Something attracted me in that strange place. But have I felt his presence? - I wondered while still bowing my head.

In my darkest dreams, I had walked down that same street but never managed to reach the end of it. There was always something that woke me up as if God didn't want to, as if my momentum was insufficient.

As he progressed, that intense orange light was getting bigger, but was he listening well? I felt a few steps approaching my figure, I no longer felt alone but was badly accompanied by some strange reason. I felt his presence very sharply, his heartbeat produced more tension when, suddenly, I began to control my own legs again. Then, just at that moment I stopped, I knew that I could reach that illuminated area between the gloomy night and left behind his steps to focus on being able to finish my task.

I had reached the end of the street and began to observe the area. The flames of the fire were destroying trees that still maintained their foliage. I just wanted to get in and put myself in the heart of the fire. Would it be at that moment when I woke up?

A sense of fear and daze seized me when, suddenly, I unmasked, in the center of the fire, that bench and, sitting there, she, unconcerned by the burning ardor. I couldn't see her like that. Was this what you didn't want me to see? Yes, I was clear. She had fled to destroy herself, to commit suicide without further delay.

However, he could not leave her in that situation, he did not deserve this. I was to blame for everything, I could not understand when he wanted to go to that town. She so energetic in everything and, me, I so closed in my selfish ideas.

Recovering my sense, I noticed a puncture in my left thigh, a sensation as if I had a pointed paper in its corners irritating that area of ​​my leg. My pocket was too small to store that.

When I took it out, I realized that, yes: it was the photo of that moment. That fire that calcined the park we went to every Sunday and, right in the center, that bank where we had the first kiss. I still remember the roof of the hospital where you took that picture that meant the beginning of the end.

Suddenly, I looked away from the image and perceived those steps again. The sound had stopped right behind me, I knew it. I felt a cold breath in my neck when, I didn't think twice, I turned around instantly.

With an open nose, scorched face and a living corpse appearance ... it was me. I could not stand the tears, I collapsed until he lifted me and caressed my cheeks with his black, and almost skeletal, hands. Smiling as he could, he told me: "Let the flames of the past not burn your future."

Suddenly, I woke up coughing on that bench, again, smelling of singe from that rooftop. I lifted my elbow that rested on his fluffy hair. I looked back and noticed how that fire had already suffocated; I looked forward and, right next to me, twisting my eyes as you stroked my left cheek, you were. She.