A Flower for Mariana

Translated by Katie Jacoby The literal truth was that I was in love with Mariana. I could never find the words, however, to confess my love to her; the mere letter of a word would begin to come together in my mind and a knot would immediately form in my throat. My mother used to [...]

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Miracle of omission

Translated by Katie Jacoby I couldn’t decide between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky—the salon discussions of the first or the poor bastards of the second; one was a collector’s edition, the other a little battered by the years. I already had García Márquez, Mishima, Kafka, Neruda and Mutis under my arm. Six was the maximum number of [...]

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Fidelity to the past

Translated by Katie Jacoby I was taken aback when I learned that she had committed suicide. Fourteen years before, we had promised to let each other know when we made that decision. That was during our college days, back when we lived from one depression to the next, those sorrows being precisely what had brought [...]

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