Short Story of a New Beginning

“My Lady, the princess is not in her bedroom,” said the maid unsettled.

“What do you mean?” I asked, for some reason I couldn’t understand a word of what she said.

“She left this.” She said and handed me a note. My sweet child wrote a few words, even with her scarce vocabulary and her clumsy handwriting.

“Mom, I went to the other side of the mountain. I want to find the flying horses”.

A tear rolled down my cheek, I sat down immediately and just thought:

“The hero journey.” The time flies indeed, it seems it was yesterday I first met her eyes.

Haunting

“Sometimes, I am scared of my own memory... My memory and all those sharp razors ready to haunt me the very second I make my mind up to forget; as an evil ghost refusing to leave the spot that made him feel at home, a ghost that I don’t seem to be able to escape from.” She said to me and I understood it was that time of the year. 

I got our clothes ready and looked at her, I always wondered why she used to do this memorial service, I read about it and it is a ritual practiced in Korea and other countries honoring ancestors, but it doesn’t seem to me this has to do with a dead relative, then what was this? I could never figure her out completely, there was always a missing piece to the puzzle. She got ready and told me to go with her. I always follow her silently, I know how annoyed she gets with noise, she says it over and over again in her books and poems: “Silence”, she claims to want silence; I wonder whether she wants it or she was left without options and ended up embracing it way too hard, and that’s why now she was so quiet. 

We started walking stairs up and I am not going to lie, it surprises me how such an old lady can move around so graciously as if life wasn’t as heavy as it claims to be at that age. 

“Should I wait here?” I said before reaching the door.

“Yes, please.” She said. I have been working with her for five years already and I still wonder whether we are friends or not, she can be extremely secretive about some matters, and incredibly open about others. The only thing she ever told me about this annual ritual was “I haven’t really learned to speak the language of those who are gone, but I have learned to listen to their requests”, and all I thought was “How can you listen to their request if you don’t understand what they are saying?”.

I sat down in the stairs and I could listen to her crying. It was always the same, the ghost she couldn’t run away from would still make her cry and she didn’t seem to want to be comforted. I wonder if she is paying some kind of penance. Maybe that religious practice of hers has more in it than what I have learned so far... Maybe I haven’t learned the real essence of it yet and maybe that’s why I don’t understand her.

Broken bridge

Photography taken by Madelaine Bustamante
[Added on August 8, 2020]

Heart, oh heart! Stop this nonsense

Tell me! Where did you lose it?

Let’s track back, maybe we’d find it.

Voices stay quiet I can not see me!

See? I mean, I can’t listen to me…

But do I really mean “to listen”?

You can not listen nor see

In this broken bridge of my soul,

Always taking me nowhere.

— Madelaine Bustamante

Like home

     He laid down next and told me:

- “Do you know, Lorelei? I, often, fantasize about you” And I giggled.

- “Still?” I said playfully, pretending to be unaffected. I knew he used to think a lot about me when we weren’t married, he would expose himself whenever we would have a discussion or whenever he was in a really good mood, as he was about to do at that moment.

- “Yes. When I am at work, I think of you... Especially when it is almost over. I think of what you are doing at home, because in my head you are always at home when I come back. You are taking a nap, you fell asleep reading a book in the living room, you are preparing dinner, you are putting your jacket in the hanger because you arrived a few minutes before me, you are laughing because you were thinking of something funny, you are on the phone with your mom and smiling at me. I like to think about you for many reasons, but when it comes to you and this house, you are the one making it feel like home, therefore when I think of you I feel rested already.” He said and I tried not to laugh, not because it was funny but because I didn’t know what to do with my emotions, with my excitement, with my love and I had to discharge it and I didn’t know anything better than laughing, even if I didn’t laugh and put all of myself on that. “What is that funny?” He asked. 

     And I was already worried about him getting mad, sometimes I just used to miss that he wouldn’t be able to see my face when he tells me something like that because through messages I can always act all collected.

- “Nothing,” I said ashamed of my own behavior. I didn’t really know what was expected from me in such moments, even if I knew, I am not the kind of person that can keep up to no one’s expectations; that’s why I like better people that aren’t interested in me, initially. “And what about those times when you arrive and I am not here yet?” I asked. Yes, that was me ruining the moment because I have a gift for that.

- “I never think of that. I get a bit grumpy if I get here and you haven’t arrived yet.” He confessed.

- “I like to wait for you,” I tried to open up too and turned to my right to see his face, his eyes were fixed on the roof.

- “I know. You say you are a cat, but sometimes you act a lot like a dog instead; and I know you don’t like the comparison but I like dogs, they are warm and kind animals.” He told me and I smiled and hugged him.

Mi alma confusa

Y ¿qué sabía mi alma? 

¿Qué sabía mi alma de culpas y penitencias,

de deseos y desobediencia? 

Me preguntaba con frecuencia,

mientras escarbaba mis asperezas, 

mientras buscaba entender mi propia incongruencia.

Tantos colores dentro de mí,

arrastrándome a la demencia;

tantas opiniones dentro de mí,

forcejeando y creando esta ambivalencia;

tantas penas dentro de mí,

rasgándome con furia.

¡Oh, alma! ¡Ten piedad de mí!

Comportate con mesura,

¿Dónde está la pureza?

¿Dónde la hermosura?

¿Dónde la inocencia? Entre tanta espesura.

Y el conocimiento...

haciéndose espacio en cada esquina de mi armadura,

y mi corazón adolorido, 

sangrando,

llorando,

no listo para la realidad que es tan cruda.

¡Oh, Señor Mío! ¡Guíame a Tu Dulzura!

¡Oh, Dios Mío! Perdona mis atrevimientos y rebeldía,

¡Oh, Creador Mío! Muéstrame con Tu Luz 

El camino hacia la paz de mi alma con Tu Cordura.

Madelaine Bustamante

[31 de Marzo del 2019]