The water chapter (1 of 6)

She came from a great leap in time. She came from many years ago. Foolish running around in the garden and children games with our parents watching. Scary stories in dark rooms. Hide and seek. She came by the afternoon with no warning whatsoever. After years, important growing years, away from my eyes. Almost completely forgotten.

“Hey, son. Guess who’s here today?” I crossed the kitchen’s door unable to expect much. I was wrong. From the verandah, she smiled at me. And no childhood Christmas had ever brought me such a sweet surprise.

She was about four years younger than me. A huge difference back in the days. Now (or at that point) we were both teenagers. And she was beautiful. So beautiful, up to this day I haven’t yet been able to describe how. I’ve tried, many times. Words step back in humiliation every time she comes. My glasses would get steamed. She talked to me as if we were the same ones jumping narrow water streams. Laughing by the swimming pool. I could barely keep any coherence in my answers. Fascinated by every little gesture she made.

The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seem was the very first thing I saw through the mud of the world and the paint with which they had painted my senses. My very first reality flash. My earliest view of things as they truly are – frozen in silence and of unspeakable beauty. She washed my eyes, and my ears, and my skin and everything - and for a moment, through her, I could see it.

You look into the abyss (they say) and the abyss looks back at you. It went like this: “Who are you?” the moment asked me. Words burned at the back of my head. “Who are you?”

A shithead. I was a shithead. During a few years she had become that amazing girl I was looking at and listening to. I had eaten a lot, smoked a lot of cigarettes and drunken bottles empty. I’d spoken thousands of kilometers of bullshit and had had tons of irresponsible fun with my friends. I was locked inside my room, the rest of the time, reading towers of books nobody else cared about. Listening to recordings nobody likes anymore. And that’s it. Nothing else. Building a fantasy with no grounds in reality. Just preparing myself for something I had no idea even existed. Guess I was just running away. Unconcerned and stupid, lazily floating over the quicksand I was.

“Who are you?” Words burned like her image all over the house. I got inside the empty room where she had been just a few hours ago, before she left. Ghosts of beauty crossing over. Ready to strike me at each new step I threw around. The room without her, so sad.

“And who are you, shithead?”

It was the first time I thought about being someone.

For her. Just for her, and for nothing else.

But I was a shithead.