Raul Zurita

Felipe Zurita

There will be nothing. You see then his eyes
wide open and soon the tufts of red hair that
stick to his face wet from sweat and saliva.
That's how he appears to you through the ice.
You know he's been crying and you notice
now the pull of his lips contracting as if he
still wants to say something. You also want
to say something. You remember the battered
table, the hole in the wall joint in the outskirts,
his screams on the telephone almost at dawn,
the taxi searching for the address a girl gave you
before he hung up. But since you didn't talk before,
you can't talk now. Or, at least, explain to him
that it doesn't matter and the trips to the
psychiatrist and your nightmarish fear of
addiction. You love him to death. You see him
through the glaciers.
You then look at the giant wall of ice and you
feel you were once there, perhaps hundreds,
thousands of years ago, and you curl up in a ball
as if wanting to save yourself from that memory.