We sat facing each other, like lotuses, bare mind and bare feet. Every floating particle of dust gleamed its meager contour against the frugal sun, cocooning us in evident, candid air. Your mouth spoke silent words and grinned. Your eyes shone, quivered and shrank at their ends. You broke your bread and gave me the bigger half. A bee then ceased her quick flight on a flower-top and you took it by the wings with your swift and gentle hands. You put her beating body (too heavy for flight) against the sunlight, examined it with fisting eyes and glanced at me one more time. Your hand like a dove carried the bee to meet with your piece of bread. The bee stretched its convex black and yellow abdomen, reached (I don’t know if in fury, joy or resignation) and stung the bread, leaving her stinger buried in the dough and ripping her entrails with its hook. There was something very particular about this sacrifice, for instead of poison, it coated the bread with golden honey. You set the bee free and it flew to die alone, unseen. Immediately another bee hesitated on a white chrysanthemum, you took it by its wings and repeated the ritual with my bread. That bee too flew away to die in some distant hideout. We sat facing each other, holding our food with both hands, our eyes drifting from dilated pupil to dilated pupil, our golden bread anointed with the fresh sacrifice of the bees and their minuscule thorns still stabbing the dough as silver slivers. With your grace and your fingers, more immaculate and clever than those who didn’t know the spindle, you gently picked out both stingers. Your mouth with lips like two full slices of pomegranate opened and your teeth dug deep into the bread, and me, with my lips sliced by the crevices of memory followed your example. It was then, a second before the void conquered our bucolic empire that I closed my eyes at the image of your kind smile and your vulnerable glance, and all the tender delight of honey filled my mouth, one second before I awoke to the immeasurable weight of an empty bed and the sweetest aftertaste of the most tangible of premonitions.Granada, March 23, 2010
