Devastating moments

"A moment of sadness, a lightning bolt that opens your chest and your eyes fill with tears, like a summer storm. A bouquet of dried flowers, frozen in time, can make you remember other springs, other times when other fresh flowers adorned the table, the dresser, placed there by other hands, which even today, closing your eyes, you can remember vividly, gently embracing you before you sleep.

That's how memory works when you have my age. In your happiest hours, it can cover your face with the cloth of nostalgia, and from there, to the depths of sadness. But don't worry, it has been "a moment" of bad weather, something very common in people of my age, the undeniable proof that you have lived.

The girl looked at her grandmother intently. Her face had stopped being tense, her grandmother seemed like her usual self, with her kind gaze. The cascade of gray hair bordering her fragile, almost transparent skin, revealed a map of blue veins that ran through every inch of her arms, her hands.

Jimena composed herself, turned the keys, and the car's engine roared to life. Once again, the window, like a projector of "the life outside," reproduced frames of the landscape. Coming and going of houses, people, rivers, mountains, and scattered animals on both sides of the road grazed languidly, oblivious to the travelers' thoughts."

"I named Jimena: The mortal tribute".