EN OCASIONES VEO MUERTOS (O GORRIONES)

Exercise in automatic writing for my Creative Memoir class about an episode in life that happened many years ago... nine years. I wrote what I felt then, not what I feel now.


You're lost little girl. Because she is gone and you are stuck in a strange country where you are not allowed to show your true face lest they get too scared, lest you get too scared yourself. You're lost little girl. You are not even allowed to mourn properly. She went away two days ago, maybe three, no-one really knows how or why, and you are stuck here and they made you go to class and you had no black clothes to wear, only a gray and orange sporstsuit. Painfully orange. You're lost little girl. You can't tell anyone she's gone. They could distrust you. They could ask questions and you don't have any answers. No one has given you answers. No one has given you anything except for empty words and pained looks, as if they knew anything about her, or about you for that matter. You're lost little girl. The children are playing. They look at you out of the corner of their eyes. Maybe they already think that you're not the happiest girl that they have ever met, as they have been telling you for years, and you always laughing inside. Maybe one morning of painfully orange isolation is enough to break up all the masks, to darken all the smiles.
It's the first of October and your birthday will come soon. The weather is fine. Even the trees look beautiful despite the attempts of your class mates to murder them with volley balls and footballs. One of your friends finally approaches you and catches an unguarded tear in your left eye. "Is something wrong?" "Oh, well, my dog just died." He believes you. You keep that lie for months. You are good at lying. You are not good at living your own life though. It feels like an old movie that someone had been watching over and over again, damaged with the use. You're lost little girl.