January 16, 2016
Subject: Hello Stranger
To: Her (To-Be-Kept-Anonymous) CC:
From: Mariano Morales (myself)
Attachments: Dispensario.pdf (original version of this translation)
Hello Stranger,
You probably already know the reason I am writing to you. You know me so well that you stared at the screen of your computer in fear to read the severity of my words. You can already sense the severity in my words. You know me so well that you even anticipated this definitive tone. Still, you must know that this time, I'm writing you from a totally different position. No need to alarm, bring your guards down and loosen up the nerves that are holding you tight. I am not trying to be dramatic or to make it harder than it already is. Nothing really has changed since last week. At least, I have not changed from who I was last week. Still, in some wicked kind of way, you know that I'm not the same I was after we hung up on the phone. I still love you, and probably will always be seeking something forgotten of me in you. A something that I will always, irremediably, long for. It’s impossible to ignore it, as subjective or intangible as it may sound. We are not children anymore. Yet I find myself so childish in writing you this email; you know writing has always been my strongest weapon, words have always been on my side and so I use them to bridge myself towards you. So even if they weren’t part of an email, we cannot simply ignore what happened. Things cannot remain unsaid. I did not change a thing since we hung up the phone, but I am not the same as I was. We are now friends (how naïve to accept it even as a possibility). We could be friends, but we aren’t. Perhaps we aren’t but strangers, why tag us with such a heavy title? You are not my friend, as much as I have repeatedly said you are. We are probably not going to be anything anymore, and with such a cruel statement comes the responsibility of understanding that in life not only the lack of love hurts. Loving hurts. Friendship and camaraderie also hurt. The mere fact of waking up every morning to things we don’t deserve hurts. Our siblings and parents will also hurt us even if it’s not on purpose. The silence hurts. People hurt. Negligence, injustice, consumerism, misery, ignorance, war, politics, diplomacy, visas, borders, religions, drugs, hunger, the privilege of having what others won’t ever aspire to have, all of it hurts. In my cause, this blessing that is to love you hurts, as you will probably hurt one day, as I will probably hurt you if I have not already hurt you enough. You hurt me so much. It’s well known, life is all up and downs, and it is the rise that makes us dread the fall, and it is the fall that makes us thrive to rise back up.
Life will hurt and you will feel like the world itself is tirelessly hurting you; at times (it's strange to say, but not that much to acknowledge and accept it as a truth) happiness will hurt you too.
In poetry, you know by now since your poetry is as true as the universality of humankind is, we sometimes find doom or redemption, condemn or freedom, but we don’t find justice. I know it now. I understand your words now. Aren’t you a poet yourself? You have witnessed how poetry can exorcise our most inner and strong gripped demons. I remember your poems, how would they will always ask something.
" I don’t know if what I hide is hidden by me or from me
sometimes I don’t know if my secret still belongs to me
I gave it to my closed eyes so long ago.
[…]
I no longer know what my secret really means
I hid it somewhere so many years ago that it lost its authority
I invented it to my ears so they would never judge me."
Your poetry is and will continue to be my reference. You validate my theory, or whatever you want to call it. Poetry brings us answers and questions, but it rarely brings us certainty. Poetry can be the fastest route to the heart in the midst of a globalized and polluted interactions in modernity, it can be a shooting star in the middle of the night, or the bravery within the knight breaking through a wall of prejudice, shyness, fears, and silence. It's so true that poetry makes us heroes. I know as a fact that putting a word to a feeling to then pass it over to another person, let alone being the addressee or reason of such feeling, is on and in itself, a revolutionary act of magical, true heroism.
In poetry we find can find so many things that it is also easy to lose them. Sanity, perhaps; we can stop making sense and start making things up at some point. Isn’t that what I've been doing all along? It scares me to death: I will no longer find you in my poetry, and that makes me shiver. I am losing to poetry my only weapon: this wounded-to-death ability (for which I will always be immensely grateful) to draw with simple words, a colossal smile upon your face. It’s kind of magic, truly, but it’s also some kind of sorcery. It's almost like killing that newborn butterfly swirling up my gut when I have barely started feeling its funny buzz. It's like hurting myself with my own, self-picked words, with my only weapon.
What all do I want to say with this? I don't know, but this is me trying to justify all this poetry I intuitively wrote you to not ramble incoherently the next time I see you, or to not crumble to pieces after demanding from you the words you always held inside you but that you never cared to say.
Still, contrarily to what I just said, and excuse me for extending this long, this collection of poems is my attempt of staying with you forever, may that be one night or a whole lifetime. This is me leaving proofs that there was a time when I loved something more than I could care to write, and proof that you were the muse for which someone wrote a book to because you are that special. I do hope for this dispensary to bring you memories of a time when things were just fine, when life was beautiful and time was just time. Memories of a past time, where I remain. A time when you recognized yourself happy and wrote poetry; how vain would my world be without having the memory of your voice reading your verses to me. Don’t ever stop writing, even if it ends up in your trash bin, as you claim when I ask you to read me your new poetry.
///
It sounds a little strange as I read it, I know, because obviously when I wrote this, like 15 months ago, I had no idea this would ever become a book, and it was intended to be read by her only. It’s so true that when I finished writing the 50 poems, I e-mailed her. That e-mail is real. These 50 poems that follow, that same attachment, as is, was sent by me and read by her on January, 2016. These words, they are all real and they all have a meaning. I truly wrote this so she could understand it, so she could see how much I was hurting despite I claim that her happiness is also my happiness.
///
You can look at it this way: medicine most times tastes awful, but you know that in the end it will make you better, it will cure you, and despite the bad taste, it stops the illness and seizes the pain. I hope these poems come as a remedy although today they might seem like they taste a little too bitter, or if they hurt you at all. I promise it is just a secondary (more like preliminary) effect. I wish for them to make you well if one day you feel the world is making you sick and you’re getting tired of life and its circumstances. I wish nothing but bright sunny days for you. Still, if there shall be one and only dark day ahead of you in life, I hope for these words to become a remedy to wipe out your sorrow if I cannot embrace you it with the everlasting hug that will always remain valid for you.
This dispensary is made of short poems, all of which were born and are bound to die in and of you. This collection of fast-made colorless poetry is nothing more than a childish argument to justify the lack of courage needed for me to say all what I would never be able to say to you looking you in the eye.
Keep this dispensary of remedies close your heart, especially if you can recall my voice stored inside it, or at least one or two smiles that you could use later in life if things do not go as you had planned. Place it in somewhere you won’t forget, just in case it does comes in handy.
Our fates don’t really matter, because independently of the place I decide to go, regardless of the person I come home to at night, or the time of the day I am caught thinking of something else, you know that I will be always as close, attentive in case you call. Call me, if you ever want to talk to me, look for me. Please find me, as I will always be expecting you.
Herein I roam hopelessly but tirelessly. I fear the day when you come back to my verses and no longer find my love. How could I ever course the man you deserve? Oh I bid you farewell.
///
In the end I did use rhetoric and composition (allegedly, of course, who knows if it fulfilled its purpose. Rhetoric (again, when I wrote this I had no idea whatsoever this was going to end up widely available to the public) kind of saved my life. The lack of answers characterizing may have saved my life. So that’s possibly the most keen answer to the question that will arise after reading the 160 questions. ‘What all drugs were you in when writing these questions? I wasn't in drugs, I was detoxing. I don't want to load this poetry book with more cheesy or romantic clichés. Yet, saying 'in love' could still not be entirely valid. I guess only time will tell. If you made it to this point you're probably wondering who the hell is this woman and why am I doing this. If I told you who she is, I'd break a promise. She once was my utopia.
///
When life hurts, meet me here to heal you from the world. Find me here to save you from your lonely days. Take in your hands this remedy book, and with it, all the love I could possibly fill it with the day I wrote it to you.
Mariano Morales.
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