“She was small and pretty, like the almond blossom…”
My dad recited that very long poem to me, by Manuel de Góngora, when I was four years old.
I didn’t understand anything, but I liked the part that said:
“Little gold and silver scissors, tris, tras, tris, tras…”
Reflecting today on the reasons that have led me to write, I conclude that since I was little, I have gone by the hand with poetry, which has been, and continues to be, my refuge and company.
In my adolescence, I overcame my first love “heart break” with that poem by Julio Flórez:
“…you are foam, I am the sea, which trusts in its anger; you make me cry, but one day, I will make you cry too…”
Later, when I had my children, Maternity, by José Pedroni:
“Woman, in a silence that will taste to me as tenderness, for nine moons your waist will grow…”
I apologize for this kind of poetic-biographical collage, but I think this is the foundation on which I was finally able to release my voice.
My first story was inspired by the complicity between my one-year-old son and my father, “The Little Prince with Long Eyelashes and the Three Essences.”
At that moment I understood that writing had an impact.
Later, I discovered that writing was necessary for my mental health, and my mind would escape into the blue hallway of the engineering office.
In the face of adversity, that which is non-negotiable, I learned that writing helped me refine my emotions. Thus, with my testimony about cancer (1995) and more recently my memoirs about grief (2020), I tried to transform fear and pain into something beautiful.
It is the alchemical power of words.
Over time, my inspiration has changed and now, with my grandchildren dancing around me, proper little Grandma, I write children’s stories for my three “Chispitas” (little sparks of light).
In any case, when I fall into the white canvas of the screen, I feel like a little girl, running, chasing a scent, a silence, a longing.
Congratulations to Atril on its third anniversary, with my gratitude for being the vehicle where I can express that, sometimes elusive longing…
Leonor Henríquez (Caracas, Venezuela) Civil Engineer by training (UCAB 1985), writer and apprentice poet by vocation. From her time in engineering emerged her Office Stories (1997), another way of seeing the corporate world. Her latest publications include reflections on grief, Hopecrumbs (2020) (www.hopecrumbs.com) and “The Adventures of Chispita” (2021) (www.chispita.ca) an allegory of life inside Mom’s belly.
Today she shares her “impulsive meditations” from Calgary, Canada, where she lives.
leonorcanada@gmail.com