Craaaash!
I hadn’t heard the sound of metal creaking for a while.
It happened while backing out of my garage, on autopilot, when I accidentally crashed into the door of my friend’s car, parked in front of my house.
Putting my embarrassment aside, the insurance company solved the problem without delay and took care of both cars.
Days after the incident, I went to the body shop for my car; it looked perfect and shiny, I hope my friend’s does too.
The fact is that when I was coming back home, with that sometimes-useless habit of establishing analogies with real life, I thought:
– I wish it were that easy to solve those other blows in life, the ones from the inside.
Those that César Vallejo referred to in his “Black Heralds”:
There are blows in life, so strong… I don’t know!
Just as we all have our internal dents and scratches, I also believe that the only body shop that can help with those inconsolable scars is the one that specializes in hugs, affection, smiles, company.
I arrived home with these somewhat depressive thoughts, but in the end, I told myself, paraphrasing our musician Gualberto Ibarreto, that one has no choice but to carry this “coward body” that, over time, also needs maintenance and spare parts.
I decided to give my internal fragilities some love, so I opened a bottle of white wine, poured myself a generous glass and drank it in silence, while the beauty of a lavender sky repaired all my bruises.
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