• Previous part (19)

You can read this novella from the beginning through this link.

---

On the afternoon of your death anniversary,
Hand in hand with my daughter,
My other hand holding a bouquet of red roses,
We arrived at the spot on the wooded lane
Where a grooved-bark, mature oak
Watched over your memorial stone,
Nestled in moss, twigs, and clover.
Mottled, watery sunlight bathed the stone
As if illuminating a sacred site.

The limestone or sandstone looked rough,
And had weathered over all these years.
Beneath the relief of a motocross rider,
A marble plaque bore the inscription,
“Izar Lizarraga Oyarbide (1981-1999).
She lived fast and died young,
But her light will shine forever.”
My childhood sweetheart,
My restless wildfire.

I crouched in front of the stone
To deposit the bouquet at its base.
I pulled out a pack of wet wipes
And wiped away the dust and grime.
I scrubbed off a white splatter of bird droppings.

The murmur of families filtered through the trees.
A flock of sheep baahed from the nearby hill.
In the stone’s relief, your helmeted figure
Clutched the bike’s handlebars,
Head tilted forward in intense focus.
Every time I laid my eyes on this figure,
My breath caught, my throat clenched,
And I struggled to loosen the knot
Twisted inside my chest.

“How long ago was nineteen ninety-nine?”
My daughter’s innocent voice asked.
After a pause, I said, “A long time ago.”
“Was she a friend of yours?”
“Yes, the best one.”

My daughter shifted her weight from foot to foot
As her attention drifted further down the lane.
I held her little hand tightly in mine,
And we stepped onto the sun-dappled sidewalk.
A familiar warmth built up behind my eyes:
Tears burning their way out.
The vision of a bumblebee weaving its waltz
Across clumps of yellow and white wildflowers
Became a watercolor blur.

Grief had ambushed me once again:
A monstrous hand reaching out of the deep
To grab me by the chest and drag me down.
I know it will remain my constant companion
For the rest of my days.

That week, I pondered why
I had brought my daughter to visit you.
I was terrified that, after my death,
Nobody who came across your name
Or gazed upon the memorial stone
Would understand what had been lost,
What you still mean to me.
I needed my child to be haunted by you,
To carry your spirit in her heart,
But I feared no amount of talk
Could transmit the depths of pain and love.
So, the memories of you would disappear,
Forgotten even by the spiders
That had built their webs within me.

One day, maybe not long from now,
After the kids we dragged into this world
Have freed themselves from their miserable parents
And claimed a home of their own,
I will lie in my deathbed alone,
Connected to beeping machines.
By then, you will feel like a sunken ship
Deep at the bottom of the sea.
Suddenly, I will breathe in a pungent odor of rust,
And from the center of my consciousness,
A sinkhole will open, a growing black hole.
As the edges of my self crumble and collapse,
Into that darkness, I will reach for your hand.

I doubt the value of words:
Pictures and music capture emotions better.
Yet, this old boy can only play with words,
And I’ve engaged in the game of pretending
That they can bridge the chasms between us.

For decades, a barbed pain has grown its tendrils
From the core of my heart throughout my body,
Creeping into every tissue and organ,
Embedding hooks deep in my bones,
As the pain reached the farthest ends of me.
My wish: that the right combination of words
Could sever a scion of this piercing truth
And graft it onto someone else’s heart.

So thank you, stranger,
For reading thousands of words
Of the only tale I care to tell,
My elegy for Izar Lizarraga,
Motocross legend,
Love of my life,
Who blazed through this world,
And burned away.

* * *

The night of April 27, 1999,
You parked in front of the candy shop.
Drenched under the torrential barrage,
We clambered off and removed our helmets.
The taste of rain mingled with your saliva
While the Aprilia’s idling engine rattled
Like a hiker hopping from foot to foot,
Eager to move on.

We wished each other good night.
Thunder growled as you straddled
Your gleaming yellow-and-white bike.
You pulled on your helmet,
Gripped the handlebars,
And lifted the side stand with a kick,
When I shouted, burning my throat,
“Wait!”

Startled, you straightened up,
One foot planted on the sidewalk,
And turned the reflective visor toward me.
I ran to you and hugged you,
Pressing my cheek against the cold helmet.
“You don’t intend to return home, do you?
Who would be so stupid to believe
That you’d go back to your father so soon?
I can’t let you leave, Izar;
If I do, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.
Stay with me tonight.”

I held your gloved hand
As you stumbled off the Aprilia.
You lifted the visor of your helmet,
Revealing large chocolate eyes
That reflected a shimmer of amber light.
Your brows were furrowed in concern.
From one nostril hung a bead of watery mucus.
“I’d much rather do that,” you said,
“But your mother forbade me from coming back.”
“I’ve taken enough shit from her.
She can suck it up.”
You shook with silent laughter.

I opened the front door to the sight of my parents.
My mother scowled, deepening the lines of her face.
Beside the woman, two steps back, stood my father,
A bald, stooped, hesitant non-entity.

Upon noticing Izar, my mother’s eyes widened.
She opened her mouth to scold me,
But I cut her off.
“Look at what her father has done.”
I brushed away the damp strands of caramel hair
Clinging to the cheek that sported a bruise,
The mottled imprint of your father’s hand.
“Izar can’t go home tonight. It’s not safe.
She’ll stay with me, no matter what you say.”

A glance at the bruise loosened my mother’s brow.
You bowed your head.
“Sorry for bothering you.
I didn’t intend to cause trouble.”
My mother narrowed her eyes.
“You rode here through this downpour?
Girl, you don’t have any common sense!”
“Sorry.”
She tsked, then threw her hands up.
“You pair of idiots. Go take a warm shower.
No, take off your jackets and shoes first.
You’re going to leave puddles all over the house.
My goodness, look at how soaked you are!
Do you want to catch pneumonia?”

As you and I padded hand in hand to the bathroom,
My mother turned to my father, seeking support,
But he shrugged and said,
“Let them be. They’re in love.”

Locked inside the bathroom,
We peeled each other’s soaked clothes,
Then chucked them on the ceramic tiles,
Where they lay like beached jellyfish.

When you untied your ponytail,
The cascading hair stuck to your shoulders.
You rubbed your pruney fingertips.
“We might get sick for real,” you said,
Then sniffled some leaking mucus back in.

I embraced you firmly,
Pressing your stiff nipples against my chest.
You shuddered once, then continued to tremble.
I whispered in your ear,
“My love, in case you have any doubts,
I’ll run away with you.”
You sighed, your breath warm on my neck,
And slid your hands down my back.
“Thank you.”

As we melted into each other,
I caressed the contours of your skin,
The myriad details unique to you
That before you were born,
Hadn’t existed in the universe,
And after you died, never would again.

Yes, Izar, I would accompany you,
Riding pillion, clinging to your waist,
Through the rush of wind and rain,
To witness the sights you longed to see,
To experience what it meant to live.
We would create a shared language,
Speak words that others would find insane,
And build our own space far away.
Nobody could compete with you,
The sole real person in the world.
As long as you were with me,
I was home.

THE END

---

• Previous part (19)

Author’s note: the last song is “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure.

• Previous part (18)
• Next part (20)

You can read this novella from the beginning through this link.

---

The eve of your death anniversary
Resurrected the old nightmare once more:
I was riding pillion, clinging to your waist,
While your Aprilia Red Rose growled
As it devoured the highway under its tires.
The rainfall hammering upon car roofs,
Drumming on our helmets,
Splashing against our drenched clothes,
Overwhelmed the steady roar of the engines.
The wind drove icy raindrops into my face.

The beam of your bike’s headlamp
Sliced through the rain sheets,
Lighting the rear wheels of the truck in front,
That spat up trails of rainwater.
In the oncoming lane, twin beams appeared
And quickly expanded toward us,
Cutting luminous swaths across the blackness.
On my right, traffic signs, trees, buildings,
They all blurred into smudges,
And the sparse streetlamps revealed themselves
Like floating, shimmering haloes.

Lights glinted off the gleaming, mirrorlike tarmac
In ripples of red and blue-tinged white.
Above, lightning leaped from cloud to cloud,
Followed by grumbling thunderclaps.

In my embrace, your body trembled;
You were crying, or at least on the verge,
And you channeled that anguish
Igniting your steel beast’s roar
With a wrench of the throttle.
My heart thrummed with dread.
The acceleration pressed against my bones,
Tightening my chest and freezing my breath.
Along with the golden tracers of streetlamps,
Oncoming vehicles whooshed past us.

Lighting the way ahead, we were falling headlong,
Whipping through the darkness like an arrow.
Teary-eyed from the sting of rain,
I raised my voice over the rushing wind,
Over the rumbling engines.
I shouted, I yelled, I gripped your sides tighter,
Imploring you to slow down.
As if you couldn’t hear me, as if I wasn’t there,
You revved the throttle further,
Making the speedometer needle climb sharply.
Your bike’s chassis shuddered under the strain.
The raindrops felt like dozens of fingers
Poking my numb face to wake me up,
But you kept racing through the storm,
Maybe wishing to outrun yourself,
Outrun all the voices telling you to stop.

As we approached a curve, your Aprilia wobbled,
Its front wheel skidded on the rain-slick tarmac,
And the bike lurched sideways,
Flinging us off.

The color spectrum gleaming through the downpour
From headlights, tail lights, streetlamps, and lightning
Spun into a blur of light and dark
While my body flailed, limbs striking out,
Scraping against the road as I slid
With rainwater gushing over me.
The friction ripped through my clothing,
Seared my skin, and tore the flesh off my bones.
Screams lodged in my throat.

Your Aprilia Red Rose was flipping end-over-end,
Scattering pieces of its decimated bodywork.
My frantic gaze glimpsed flashes,
Illuminated by the headlights of passing cars,
Of your body cartwheeling uncontrollably.

A murky shape, the guardrail,
Rushed out of the rain-haze toward us
Like a reef thrusting from a savage ocean.
You smashed against the metal barrier,
Which launched you into the darkness.
I clenched my eyes shut, bracing for impact,
And awaited the final, wet crunch.
When I slammed into that guardrail,
A loud snap reverberated through my spine
In a starburst of pain.

The impact had squeezed my lungs,
Knocking the air out.
As I gasped, mouth agape,
A thunderous crash against the guardrail
Sent a shockwave through the cold steel,
Making me, slumped against it, shudder violently.
Fragments of the bike ricocheted off the barrier
And stung my arms and face like shrapnel.
The metallic clang lingered as a discordant ringing.

Your Aprilia lay on its side close by,
Gleaming darkly in muddy rainwater,
Its windscreen shattered,
Frame bent, chassis mangled,
Front wheel still spinning.
A rearview mirror dangled from its stem,
And reflected the electric clouds.
Fuel leaked out of the dented tank.
The headlamp’s white beam,
Shining through the cracks in the lens,
Faltered, flickered, then faded away.

The ozone scent of the storm mingled
With the chemical smell of gasoline,
The burnt stench of grinding metal,
And the bitterness on my tongue.
A tingling white noise had spread
To the farthest reaches of my body,
And in the places that hadn’t gone numb,
My shredded flesh screamed
In a fiery, knifelike pain.

Instead of writhing in the gutter
Like a crushed insect,
I would return to your side,
But when I tried to stand,
My limp legs refused to move.
I grabbed the cold, wet guardrail,
Then heaved myself over it.
I hit the grassy, upward slope chest-first,
And mud splattered on my face.

I crawled onward, clawing at the grass and soil,
Coating my hands with squelchy mud.
The relentless pounding of heavy rain
Along with the deep rumble of distant thunder
Isolated me in a cocoon of noise.
Every creep up the slope ripped me open with hurt.
In jagged gasps, I breathed razors.
Where are you, Izar? Where are you?

The blades of grass glistened
With a fresh spray of blood.
Silvery light from turning headlights
Swam in waves over a body splayed face up
Like a doll tossed in a tantrum.
Your drenched, ripped red jacket gleamed.
Gashes oozed through the torn jeans.
The crushed helmet still clung to your head.

Beside you, I pushed myself up onto my knees,
And lifted the cracked visor of your helmet.
Raindrops splattered in concentric circles
On the blood pooling within the face aperture.

I attempted to take your helmet off,
But your neck strained, its muscles taut,
As if your head might snap off.
You couldn’t breathe.
“Stay with me, Izar. Don’t leave me, please.”
When I scooped blood out of the hole,
My fingers didn’t graze your face.
I sank my hand up to my wrist, to the elbow,
But I couldn’t reach you.

I woke up with a start, drenched in sweat,
Gasping for breath, clutching at my throat.

My fingers are calloused
From decades of clawing
At the dark soil of this world
To drag myself back to you.

---

• Previous part (18)
• Next part (20)

Author’s note: the song for today is “I Lost You” by The Walkmen.

The next part will conclude this story.

• Previous part (17)
• Next part (19)

You can read this novella from the beginning through this link.

---

I used to know every contour of your face,
The exact timbre of your voice,
The way your body pressed against mine,
Your taste, the salty scent of your sweat.
But your traces are flaking off my brain;
In the seams and margins of my memories,
Bugs and patches have appeared,
Corroding the integrity of a past
That I’m editing, shaping with bias,
As I revisit it time and time again.
Your gaze, your smile, your laughter,
They all fade away into oblivion
With each ticking second.

Izar, I beg you, stay with me.
Let’s leave this suffocating city
On a motocross odyssey spanning Europe:
Hundreds of kilometers of highways,
Speeding through the countryside
Past petrol stations, fields, and farmhouses.
We’ll make love on the shores of the sea,
Then sleep under a blanket of stars.
Let’s rent bikes and ride along the Seine.
Let’s explore the winding streets of Venice,
Swim in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean,
Surf the waves of Hawaii or Costa Rica,
Climb the ancient terraces of Machu Picchu.
For the rest of my days, I will care for you,
Your unstable mind, your fits of rage.

Growing up, I feared venturing far
From my neighborhood, from my parents.
I dreaded exposing myself to risky experiences.
In my mind, I saw my mother’s stern face,
Ready to scold and ground me
For daring to struggle against the vines
She had wrapped tight around me.
Roam the breadth of Spain? Travel the world?
Such adventures felt as distant as the stars.
I was convinced that even as an adult,
I wouldn’t organize something so troublesome.

But that year, I stood in the blazing Roman heat
With my teenage son beside me
And my daughter’s small hand grasped in mine,
Gazing up at the façade of the Pantheon,
Its towering Corinthian columns glowing faintly,
Burned by the merciless July sun;
Its triangular pediment pockmarked, scarred,
With projectile strikes from World War II.
I longed to appreciate its grandeur in solitude,
But a throng of tourists choked the square.
A listless guy stood dressed like a centurion,
His helmet adorned with a plume of dyed horsehair.
The muscle cuirass concealed the flab
Of a modern man suited to a desk job.

The Pantheon didn’t belong in this post-apocalypse,
Among the disoriented survivors of the 21st century,
Who lacked the knowledge to recreate
The sunlit glory of their once eternal past,
And who had lost the will to rediscover it.

Well, what did you think about the sights, Izar?
We never had the chance to escape together,
But I carried your memory to Rome.
I hope you enjoyed the trip.

In my little corner of the world, whenever I could,
I escaped to the freedom of an isolated bench
Along the wooded lane containing your memorial stone.
There, beneath the sunlight filtering through branches,
Hunched over a notebook, I poured my memories of us,
Capturing in words every detail I could remember.
I discovered that writing tricked the brain
Into gilding moments and affixing them to its cells,
Regardless of their authenticity.

Drawing, writing, they couldn’t save me;
They just helped me endure this lonesome life
For yet another day.
But maybe the right words could save
What remained of you.

In my heart, a secret garden bloomed.
Pollen sparkled on iridescent flowers,
Their petals fanning out like peacock feathers.
In this floral realm where time stood still
And death could never enter,
You, enshrined within a poem or story
That wouldn’t fade, rot, nor be reduced to ashes,
Could live eternally.

---

• Previous part (17)
• Next part (19)

Author’s note: the songs for today are “This Is the One” by The Stone Roses, and “Sit Down” by James.

• Previous part (15)
• Next part (17)

You can read this novella from the beginning through this link.

---

For days, I slipped in and out of lucidity.
I recall flashes of the waste collection center,
Of standing in the nearby landfills I had located,
Immersed in the stench of rotting organic matter.
I pleaded with employees wearing hard hats
And bright, reflective vests,
Begging them to let me access the collected trash.
I struggled to understand their replies;
My fogged mind registered their words as noise
Mingled with the caws of scavenging birds
And the sporadic rumble and beeps
Of lumbering trucks as they unloaded debris.

I wanted to collapse at the sight of endless trash:
Humanity unmasked as a blight upon nature.
I was tainted, a corrupting force spreading rot
To everything I needed to protect.

Workers denied my requests, citing policy,
But an employee in her fifties must have pitied me,
Because she allowed me to realize for myself
In the volume of compacted refuse
That my mementos of you no longer existed.

I dreamt you were calling me on a psychic link,
Begging me to find you
As a hill of trash slowly crushed you,
Suffocated you.
I heard your ribcage creaking, ready to collapse.

I dreamt of a colossal trash truck
Whose jagged teeth, like a predator’s jaws,
Closed around your body, pulverizing you
In a deafening cacophony of screeching metal
And the dull pop of bones breaking.
As you struggled against the mechanical jaws,
Leaking tears, mucus, and blood,
Your wide, terrified eyes met mine.
I heard your anguished voice, accusing,
“You knew how this would end.
Why didn’t you save me?”

On the couch where I slept, I awoke in a cold sweat,
Heart hammering, tears streaming down my face.
I thought I had survived the worst of my grief,
But it hadn’t immunized me against its return.

I took a medical leave from work that nearly got me fired,
And I spent those days encased in lead.
Among my family, I roamed like a black, silent fire,
So unhinged that my wife didn’t dare to chastise me.

At night, as my family slept, I stared into the darkness.
I listened to the whoosh of blood in my veins,
Life churning onward like the filthy waves
Of a sewer canal clogged with decaying memories.

Izar, two decades had passed since you died,
So why did your absence pulsate in my brain
Like the pain of a needle embedded deep?
Why did every hour still remind me
That you were no longer here to hold my hand?
I would never again talk with you,
Lean into you, breathe you in.
A crash against a guardrail had killed you,
The consequence of your choice to live dangerously.
I would never know if you’d have grown bored of me,
If our love would have faded or endured.

Once I clawed my way out of the black pit
And I recognized my wife as a human being again,
Every glance at her made me grimace.
I lived with a criminal that had escaped punishment
On account of our children’s well-being,
And we interacted like snakes
Forced to share a cramped vivarium.

I yearned to listen to your voice damn near daily,
And when I thought of those treasured tapes
That had contained our mock radio shows,
I couldn’t trust myself to stay in my wife’s presence.
But the loss of those recordings, I could have prevented it;
I knew that magnetic tapes degrade,
That oxygen was eating away at our young voices.
Although I had planned to digitize them,
I had kept postponing the task,
Thinking there would be another day.

Whenever I could, for sanity’s sake,
I escaped my home
And took long walks along the wooded lane
Where your memorial stone stands.
That narrow, mossy path ran parallel to the road,
Bordered by yellow-green grasses and leaves.
The sunlight streamed through skeletal branches
Stark against the background of rolling hills.
The breeze tickled my nose with the scents
Of moist soil, decaying vegetation, and pastures,
And the silence was interrupted only
By birdsong,
The breeze rustling leaves,
The bleating of grazing sheep,
And the sporadic whoosh of a passing vehicle.
In my mind, I spoke to you,
Recounting everyday moments from my kids’ lives,
Seeking your opinion on how to parent them
So they wouldn’t grow up bitter and miserable.

I had gone to check on our toddler,
And found my wife kneeling in the living room
In front of the coffee table and a cup,
As she wrote on a pocket notebook.
Beside her, our daughter babbled to a doll.
Standing still, I observed them
As if through an exhibit glass.
Our daughter approached the table
To mess around with the cup of coffee.
By the time my wife noticed,
The drink had already spilled.
“Look what you did!” she snapped.
Once our toddler returned her attention to the doll,
My wife hunched over, her shoulders shaking,
And she covered her face with both hands.

The thought of consoling her crossed my mind.
I should at least have taken our daughter away.
But I didn’t want to deal with human beings,
With their demands and expectations I couldn’t meet,
With their vindictiveness and their calculated cruelty.
Instead, I crept to the bathroom as quietly as possible,
Where I let the roar of water from the shower drown out
The world’s meaningless noise.

During my solitary walks,
I replayed our pretend radio shows in my head,
Recalling our repartee as if it were song lyrics,
But with age and the limitations of my brain,
I encountered gaps in my memory
Where I questioned if I was inventing your lines.

I adopted the habit of sitting on a bench
Opposite a slope tangled with brambles
To transcribe the echoes of our teenage voices,
Haunted by the need to immortalize you
In this universe that insisted on erasing you.

Once I ran out of the words we had shared,
I wrote letters to you,
Elaborating on my impressions and pains.
From those days onward,
My notebooks became like dumpsters
In the grimy alleyway behind a busy restaurant,
Waiting to receive the daily effluvia of my mind.

We took the kids on a family outing
To a destination my wife had picked:
Mount Arburu.
The cool air carried the scent of pine trees.
I found myself staring at a view
That you and I had relished:
The rising, rounded peaks of Aiako Harria,
Rugged and patched with dense forest.
Gray clouds tended a titanic shadow
Over my sprawling hometown of Irún,
Extending to Hondarribia and the Txingudi Bay.

Two decades ago, I sat pillion on your Suzuki RM125,
My arms wrapped tightly around your waist,
The bike rumbling through my bones,
As you slalomed between the thorny shrubs
Scattered across this slope,
And flung joyful laughs to the wind.
Unhindered, nature cares little for two decades;
Here, only the unbreachable wall of time
Separated me from riding with you again.

I dreamt you and I held a funeral
For your wrecked Aprilia Red Rose.
We laid the mechanical beast to rest
Wrapped in bandages and duct tape,
On a bed of dead grass and dried leaves.
With our hands clutched in grief,
You wearing your motorcycle helmet,
We knelt and prayed before the bike,
Murmuring the kind of heartfelt goodbye
Reserved for lost loved ones.

At the front door of our apartment,
I was shrugging into my coat
When I felt a gaze on my face.
My wife, seated on the sofa, was leaning forward,
Wearing a loose blouse that exposed her breasts
To the hungry tug of gravity.
From the cigarette pinched between two fingers,
A thin ribbon of smoke swirled upward.

How many times had I envisioned confrontations
In which my wife’s mouth would spill venom,
Recriminating every aspect of our marriage?
I imagined her calling me a selfish asshole,
And I shot back, labeling her a heartless psychopath
That had enjoyed destroying my mementos of you
While knowing how much they meant to me.

But my wife’s gaze was tender,
Her eyebrows raised in the middle.
“The dead, they no longer love us,
And they certainly don’t suffer.
They don’t regret the lost opportunity
To spend more time together.
From what you shared about her,
She would have been horrified
By how much she ruined your life.”

I fumbled for words to refute her,
But my throat had constricted.
My eyes welled up.
In a daze, I swung open the door
And hurried down the stairs.

---

• Previous part (15)
• Next part (17)

Author’s note: the songs for today are “Should Have Known Better” and “The Only Thing,” both by Sufjan Stevens, and “Like a Stone” by Audioslave.

• Previous part (14)
• Next part (16)

You can read this novella from the beginning through this link.

---

In the chiaroscuro of the ultrasound image,
The thick, dark uterine wall encircled life within:
An oval head attached to a bean-shaped torso.
The fetus rocked softly, suspended in space-time,
Untouched by the chaos of the outside world.

In the shadowed profile of its face,
Gentle rises hinted at the forming eyes,
A nose, a budding mouth.
Trailing from the head, a line of vertebrae
Resembled a delicate string of pearls.
Under the insistent thump-thumping
That pulsed through the amniotic fluid,
A certainty branded itself on my mind:
This is my daughter.

I hovered near the ceiling of a delivery room,
Watching like a detached stranger
My wife’s sweat-sheened face,
Hair plastered to her clammy forehead,
Her chapped lips bared in a grimace.
From between the former lawyer’s thighs,
A midwife coaxed out our bloody offspring,
The seed that had germinated
From a lump of cells into a human
Destined one day to venture beyond my reach.

I paced our postnatal room
While I supported my daughter’s head.
A pink blanket swaddled her snugly.
Her skin, fresh off the factory,
Blazed with a rosy tint.
She smelled powdery and pure.
This baby resembled you, Izar:
She inherited your caramel-colored hair,
Your chocolate eyes, your carefree smile
That lightened the weight of the world.
Life still contained wondrous surprises.

In the master bedroom, while our baby slumbered,
I was drinking the sight of her flawless skin
When my aging brain craved the drug of pain.
I needed to stray out of this mundane refuge
Into the infinite darkness,
So I could resume speaking with the dead.
I slid the wardrobe door open,
Its rollers grinding against the track,
But the garments whose hems once draped
Over the moving box holding your remains
Now hung unimpeded.

I shifted aside T-shirts, shirts, and sweaters,
And found myself staring at an empty corner.

Could I have heaved the box out
Only to forget to put it back?
No, not once in all these years.
Frantically, I rummaged through the items
That could hide a moving box:
Unused bags, backpacks, travel suitcases.
I emptied the upper shelves,
Tossing aside old blankets and extra pillows.

I found my wife on the balcony,
Seated on a bistro-style chair,
Scrolling through her smartphone,
And taking a drag from her cigarette.
“Where is she?” I demanded to know.
Instead of chewing me out for my tone,
She kept her gaze glued to the screen.
The dying sun tinted her smoke blood-orange.
“Where’s who?” she asked dryly.
“You know well what I mean.”
“I don’t.”
My heartbeat rammed my ribcage.
“The box.”
“Box, what box.”
“The box containing what’s left of Izar.
The box you kept complaining about,
Arguing that it took up too much space.
The box you clearly hated.
Where the fuck is it?”

After my wife confessed,
The Earth halted its spin.
The distorted echoes of her voice
Resonated through my mind’s cavern:
“I dumped it all in the trash.”

Panic burrowed into my brain and bones.
I rushed out of the apartment,
Down the stairs onto the street,
And straight to the array of recycling bins.
No traces of you among the discarded:
A worn-out stool, a broken microwave,
And disassembled furniture.
The stench of rotting organic waste mingled
With the scents of hot dust and cardboard,
And the bins’ heavy lids clanked loud,
As I peered again and again into the gloom,
Desperatedly searching for a tape or a photograph.

“It’s useless,” my wife said.
She stood with her arms crossed,
But when our gazes met, hers flinched.
She spoke again, her voice wavering.
“I did it two days ago.”

Sharp pangs struck my racing heart,
And spread along my veins and arteries.
I staggered away from the recycling bins
As I struggled to breathe.

My wife’s caustic tone poured on my wounds.
“You’re not bringing that girl back to life.
You should have gotten rid of her stuff years ago
And allowed yourself to move on,
But it seems you derive sick pleasure
From self-flagellation.
It’s time to stop living in the past.
Focus on what truly matters, what’s real:
Your wife, your son, and your baby daughter.
I won’t stand by and watch you neglect us.”

My last vestiges of you, my Izar,
Still carrying the scent of a fallen star:
Figurines, comic strips I drew for you,
Handwritten letters, your motorcycle gloves,
Photographs, cassette tapes with our shows,
A T-shirt stained dark with your blood,
Teeth, bone shards, scraps of flesh,
Your foot severed at the ankle.

I would never hear your laughter again.

A silent bomb had exploded inside me,
Hollowing out a vast space in my core.
My knees hit the grimy pavement.
I clawed at my scalp as spasms rocked me.
“You’re gone,” my mind repeated again and again,
An alarm blaring against the bruised gray matter
Of a broken brain.

I don’t know how long it took
For me to hoist myself up,
Soaked through with cold sweat,
But now, a riot raged in my skull,
A cacophony of furious voices.
At the doorway of the nearby estate agent,
Next to its window flaunting dreams of elsewhere,
A young woman’s brow furrowed with concern.
Other stares pierced the back of my head;
In front of the mechanic shop,
Beside a car with its hood raised,
Two grease-stained men gawked at me,
The stranger unraveling in public.

If I abandoned my wife like she deserved,
I wouldn’t just break my son’s heart,
But also rob my baby daughter of a father.

Tears traced paths down my wife’s cheeks,
Leaving shimmering trails.
She controlled her outburst of genuine emotion
Behind the taut muscles of her face.
That glare alone was a silent rebuke
For managing to wring tears from her,
But I didn’t give a shit;
Whatever goodwill I had accumulated
Over years of a weary coexistence
Had switched off in an instant.
I wished I had never met her.

Despite my wife’s cracking voice,
Her words tore through the air like daggers.
“You’ve grieved for her longer than she even lived.
From the moment you first told me about that girl,
I knew I wasn’t the one you truly loved,
But I stupidly hoped I would be enough.
After all, I’m the one who stuck around,
Who gave birth to your children.
No matter how hard I tried to make you happy,
Nothing ever pleased you.
It’s always been about Izar, Izar, Izar,
That immature, reckless brat
With no care for the future,
Driven only by selfish whims.
You know it was the bitch’s own fault,
Speeding through the rain.
If she hadn’t gotten on that bike,
She’d still be alive,
Bumming off some poor sap,
And you’d have forgotten her by now.”

My body had flash-cooled
As if dunked in a tank of liquid nitrogen.
I struggled to process my wife’s words,
To believe she had uttered them.
I saw myself grabbing the abandoned stool,
And swinging it down on her forehead.
I pictured the shock in her eyes,
But before she could defend herself,
Before any onlooker could intervene,
Her skull would have cracked open,
Spraying splatters of blood and cerebral tissue.
Then I would have run, run, run away,
Fleeing from this rotten city to the nearest highway,
Where some truck wouldn’t slow down in time.

But no remnant of you existed anymore
Except in the molecules of my brain.

---

• Previous part (14)
• Next part (16)

Author’s note: today’s song is “Shine a Light” by Spiritualized.

• Previous part (13)
• Next part (15)

If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this novella from the beginning (link here).

---

My wife unclasped her bra and peeled it off.
Her twin globes of fatty tissue
Draped, swayed, and settled.
My mouth watered and my crotch tingled
With the beastly urge to grab that flesh,
Making it spill through my parted fingers.
I needed to feel those nipples hardening
Under the swirling tip of my tongue.

My intense gaze met my wife’s,
That narrowed in anticipation
Of another verbal brawl.
Her guarded posture loosened.
“See, you can still lust.
You’re not a zombie after all.”
As she tugged down her panties,
Her silken curls flashed a glimpse
Of her slit’s pink promise.

Although we resented each other,
We both needed to escape
From our exhausting existence.
Naked save for our wedding rings,
We immersed ourselves in carnal delights
To drown our frustrations,
Exploiting the mechanisms crafted by nature
To convince its slaves wordlessly,
From humans to the most cretinous creatures,
That their lives should revolve around sex,
Sex, and more sex, lest the species perish.

Instead of making love,
We tangled, grappled, and clawed
Like starved dogs devouring a meal,
Both reduced to incoherent strings
Of grunts, gasps, and cusswords.
Flesh smacking against flesh,
Neck biting, hair pulling,
Nails raking across my back,
A hand tightening around her throat.

Once we achieved our release,
We lay on fevered, rumpled sheets
Coated in the sour smell of sweat.
My mind was bleached blank.
As my wife drew deeply on a cigarette,
I surrendered to the afterglow,
Letting it slide me into sleep.

My wife suggested a family outing
To a self-serve Chinese buffet in Oiartzun,
On a whim, I thought, without ulterior motives.
The chilled air around the food counters
Smelled of herbs and spices from meat marinades,
Complemented by the briny scent of fresh seafood.

Amidst the din of hungry patrons’ conversations
And a pop tune piping through speakers,
I fished my meal out of gastronorm containers:
Skewered meats coated with a paprika marinade,
Slices of pink chicken, fatty cuts of beef,
Squid with their tentacles entwined.

Life itself dished out pain like a relentless rain,
So we drugged ourselves with our bodies’ rewards
For stuffing nutrients into our gullets,
And yielding to the innate urge to procreate.

As my son poured soy sauce over his sushi,
My wife rested her elbows on the table.
“Haven’t you two wondered why we’re here?”
My son and I, both chewing, glanced at each other.
She smiled, and pointed at him with chopsticks.
“Little man, you’re gonna become a big brother.”

I choked on a bolus of beef,
And gulped water until I stopped coughing.
While my eyes had teared up,
Hers, hard chunks of obsidian,
Drilled into me expectantly.

I always made sure to wrap it up,
Leaving the slim chance of an accident,
Or the prick of a needle.
Regardless, my wife’s aging womb held within
A new life destined for this ruined world.

“I-Is it a boy or a girl?” my son asked.
“Too early to tell.”
“So, like, I’ll have to share my room?”
“We’ll see. Dad, any thoughts?
Are you going to congratulate us?”
I stared back in stunned disbelief
As cold panic bubbled in my bowels.
She pinched a rice ball with her chopsticks.
“I’m keeping the baby.
You can either stick around or leave.”

---

• Previous part (13)
• Next part (15)

Author’s note: today’s song is “Angel” by Massive Attack.

In case you have missed this story (although I doubt many are reading it), you may have noticed that I’ve been busy making songs. As an obsessive, single-minded maniac, once I sink my claws into something, it’s very hard for me to focus on anything else, even my own survival. However, I’ve made sure to progress daily on the story, and I fully intend to finish it. Besides, the AI service that allows me to produce studio-quality songs has a monthly limit that I’m about to hit, so I’ll have no choice but to return to writing fulltime something other than silly songs.

• Previous part (12)
• Next part (14)

If you haven’t read all the previous parts or you don’t remember them well, I urge you to read this novella from the beginning (link here).

---

My wife’s accusatory glare and weaponized tongue,
Carrying years of racked-up bitterness,
Jabbed, punched, kicked, stabbed.
She flayed me inch by excruciating inch.

You’re a grown man. Stop moping around.
Get off the fucking pity wagon.
Since the beginning, did you have zero intention
Of being fully committed to this marriage?
I gave up law to be a housewife. Am I not enough?
Oh, forgive me for interrupting your endless reveries.
While you’re busy mourning your teenage sweetheart,
I’m here, flesh and blood,
Holding together the family you keep forgetting.
Are you satisfied tormenting me and our child
Because you refuse to let that girl go?
Why do I need to measure up to an idealized teenager?
How is it possible that someone you dated
Fifteen fucking years ago,
Who doesn’t even exist anymore,
Matters more to you than your wife,
The mother of your own fucking kid?

My lovely wife had a lawyer’s soul:
She saw every argument as a chance
To uncover flaws in logic,
To chip away at the opponent’s stance,
To claim the victor’s glory.
As for me, beaten and battered,
I had become a ragdoll
Growing threadbare by the day.

Whenever I anticipated the acidic talk,
I cowered inside my besieged mind,
Clutching at the crumbling battlements,
Lacking the strength to yell at her, or beg her,
To shut the fuck up.
My wife, along with her vindictive glare,
Elbowed her way into my memories of you
To contaminate that sanctuary,
And every time she brought you up,
A pang rippled through my scar tissues,
Echoing, “You’re dead, you’re dead.”

Getting married, sharing an apartment,
Should have provided a traveling companion
With whom to endure this lonesome life.
Instead, I spent my energies erecting walls
To shield my gangrenous heart,
And to muffle any human utterance
Until it became incomprehensible noise.
I felt like I had invested my adulthood
Anticipating a visit to a luminous city,
Saving up and planning meticulously,
Only to arrive at a filthy, ruinous dump
Infested with vermin.

I had surrendered control
Of my meat-and-bones vessel
To someone who didn’t respect me,
Who exploited and mistreated me.
I wished a yawning chasm
Would swallow my wife,
My apartment, this city,
But the mirror of time showed
My stooped figure decades older:
A stammering, browbeaten coward
Just like my father.

My wife was loading the dishwasher
When she casually spewed an attack
That I recognized by its acidic tone,
Even though I had blocked the content.
This time, instead of keeping quiet,
I told her to turn around and listen.
She froze, then straightened up,
Closed the dishwasher with her hip,
And faced me, arms folded,
Her gaze fixed upon me
Like the muzzle of a revolver.

“Each morning since April 27, 1999,
I wake up to the absence of the person
Who made living worthwhile.
You’ve never lost anyone dear,
So you cannot possibly grasp
This grief that has eroded me daily.
You’re frustrated because I have failed
To measure up to your ideal husband,
But I’m the man that remains,
And though I stumble, I’m here,
Doing the best I can with what’s left.
Countless times I’ve wanted to die,
But I chose to keep going for you,
And for our son, who deserves a father.”

“Stop neglecting our family by prioritizing
Your unhealthy fixation with that girl.”
“Do you think I have a choice?”
“Get a fucking therapist. Take antidepressants.”
“Should I erase her, then? Pay to have her scrubbed?”
“You act as if she were the love of your life,
Even though she ruined you.”

Her words had shotgunned my ribcage.
I breathed slowly to quell the shaking rage.
“Maybe love and ruin are interchangeable.
You know, when I agreed to marry you,
I had hoped for a lifelong partner
Who would inspire and encourage me,
Who wouldn’t insist on harassing me
Over the most traumatic event of my life,
Who would provide even a fraction of the joy
That Izar gifted me by simply existing.”

On the opposite side of the kitchen island,
The skin around my wife’s eyes tightened
As her lawyerly mind analyzed my words
For openings, inconsistencies, weaknesses.
Amid the tension, an out-of-place noise:
The creak of our son’s bedroom door.
Drowning out my wife’s bitter tirade,
I imagined his small heart pounding.
Behind that door, a wary creature
Hoped to escape notice.

That evening, I ventured into his bedroom,
Whose walls were a galaxy of space paraphernalia.
My son, reclined against the pillows,
As the glow of the bedside lamp
Illuminated his focused features,
Lost himself in a novel titled “Ender’s Game.”

He tilted his face upward at me as if I were a sun
Failing to warm his frozen planet.
Those glasses magnified deep-set eyes
Whose gaze held mine warily.
“I read that one back in middle school,” I said,
“And I remember enjoying it quite a bit.”
“It’s good,” he said,
Then refocused on the page.

How could I, a ruined man, improve my son’s life?
Instead of training him to carry on into the future,
To survive despite crushing unhappiness,
Perhaps I should abandon him,
Let his resilient mother forge ahead
Without the burden of my misery.

Izar, if this child had belonged to us,
How would you have nurtured him?
You, the sun I revolved around.
You, who had taught me what it meant
To make the best of a crumbling world.

My son and I rode on leg-powered bikes
Past the ruins of Roman furnaces.
Our pedals and chains clicked rhythmically.
On the muddy path beneath our tires,
Gravel crunched and stray twigs snapped.
Puddles from recent rainfall mirrored
The dove-gray cloud cover
And arching, naked branches.
A blanket of fallen leaves blurred
The boundaries of the unpaved path
Flanked on our left by an ancient wall:
A mosaic of weathered, moss-daubed stones.
The mist that hung in the air cooled my lungs.

We reached a fork in the trail
Where a slope would force us to dismount
And push our mountain bikes uphill
While seeking purchase on exposed stones.
“Let’s head up there,” I said.
My son, as he readjusted his helmet,
Shot me a skeptical look.
“Where does it lead?”
I got off my bike.
“I don’t know.”

A meandering dirt path, worn by footsteps
But now reclaimed by nature,
Opened to a clearing of greens and browns
Where square, one-story buildings stood,
Their once-white walls aged, stained,
And half-conquered by creeping ivy.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be here,” my son said.
I stopped and listened to the chirping birds,
To the distant creaking of branches,
But no one had claimed these ruins.
“Let’s explore,” I said.

We were rolling our bikes through the garden
Of a family gone for decades.
An anonymous hand had gathered stones
To form the sinuous banks of a stream.
Water rippled, reflecting dapples of sunlight.
Wide-leafed plants, unique in these woods,
Still blossomed white, bell-like flowers.
Beside the stream, on a filthy, pitted wall,
An intact grill guarded a window opening
That gaped like a hollow eye.

My son followed cautiously.
“How old do you think this place is?”
“It belongs to the Roman era.”
“C’mon, dad. Romans lived, like,
A thousand years ago.”
“More like two thousand.”
“Mom would scold us if she saw us
Wandering around abandoned places.”
“No doubt. But she doesn’t have to know.”
“Imagine if we owned this secret space,
And transformed it into a hideout.”
“These days? They would take it from us.”
“What if zombies attacked now?”
“We should have brought baseball bats.”
“I bet if I had a machine gun,
I’d blast every last one of them.”
“Good luck convincing mom to buy that.”

We let the bikes fall into a patch of tall grass,
Then we entered the roofless, derelict house.
Its floor was carpeted with dried leaves
That crackled under our sneakers.
Against the inner walls and their peeling paint,
Someone had arranged piles of chipped bricks,
Remnants of moss-cloaked furniture,
Rusted mattress springs.
Logs lay scattered, their bark mottled.
Weeds had sprung up all around,
Thriving amid the detritus.
I inhaled the scent of moist soil and tetanus.

At the end of the garden stood a woodshed
Stacked with logs shrouded in grimy cobwebs
Like antediluvian bones in a catacomb.
Decades ago, the owner picked these logs,
Hand-chopped them, and stored them as fuel
For fires that would never come.

---

• Previous part (12)
• Next part (14)

Author’s note: the songs for today are “Swan Dive” by Waxahatchee, and “Cosmic Love” by Florence + the Machine.