Gente que Cuenta

Two cents, by Leonor Henríquez

Carl Larsson Atril press
Carl Larsson
Desayuno de madrugada, 1900

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Today I went out to buy a loaf and a rose.

The bread because I ran out and I like it for breakfast.

The rose, to fulfill a wish of someone very special, a 4-year-old girl, my granddaughter Natalia.

We recently threw a pebble into the river, and I told her to make a wish. She said that her wish was, a flower.

And I said to myself, well, a rose for Natalia.

This morning, when I was on my way to the bakery and flower shop, I already sensed that this was not an ordinary mission.

I bought the bread and a coral-colored rose.

I left the store with a feeling of fullness that is difficult to explain, as if nothing was missing, neither in my pantry, nor in my life.

I drove to my house ready to have breakfast and surprise Natalia with her flower, her wish fulfilled.

And so, ends this story.

Simple and ephemeral, like a loaf or a rose.

The rest of the day I dedicated myself to breathing life and its perfume.

To finish, I share one of those unforgettable phrases, which I discovered with my beloved husband, many years ago in a small Welsh town:

“If I only had two cents left in life, with one I would buy a piece of bread and with the other a rose. The bread to keep me alive and the rose to have a reason to live.”

www.atril .press Leonor Henríquez e1670869356570
Leonor Henríquez (Caracas, Venezuela) Civil Engineer by training (UCAB 1985), writer and apprentice poet by vocation. From a very young age she participated in creative writing workshops at CELARG, Caracas. Her fictions were published in the anthology Voces Nuevas (1990-91), and later her testimonial, Existe la Luz (1995). 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) and “The Adventures of Chispita” (2021), a children’s story, an allegory of life inside Mom’s belly.
Today she shares her “impulsive meditations” from Calgary, Canada, where she lives.
leonorcanada@gmail.com

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