Rain

I clearly remember the day Stella left. I had just bought The Guardian, and a piece of news on the cover said something about St Patrick’s Day. It was raining and cold, the sky covered with that grey so typical of London. I was walking down a very lighted street, pubs everywhere and drunken people. My mobile rang. A message.

My Spanish was crap for I had not seen her for two entire months. The airport was closed for two days; some bombs had just exploded in the city, many people had died. She never called me again.

Thinking about why I was so selfish and kept a distance from her, I could just conclude that I was too afraid of not being what she thought would have been possible. I had quit my job, the Landlord had given me a few days to find another house, and my big love had disappeared. I bought a bottle of Vodka, drank it plain, and my stomach made a complaint, I felt utterly dizzy. By the river, two policemen asked me for documents.

Take your hands off me. I don’t owe you a penny!

I climbed the stairs of the Jubilee Bridge, the metal installations seemed to shake, the Thames danced, my eyes could not make any difference from a statue to a human being, everything just seemed to move, I fell down.

The sky got really angry, and when all I could care about was lost, deeply sore and lonely; when everything was this being on my own and totally disliking this person I had become to me and to the others, isolated, a self-saboteur; and when everything turned out as a feeling of emptiness and lacking as unbearable as the moment that a car crashes at 190 km/hour, then, it started raining.