Joana Saraiva
I got mixed up with the letters. The letters are like that, mixable.
They froze in my mouth – between the tongue and the teeth – and out of embarrassment, or because they got mixed up along the way, they didn’t arrive in time to become people.
Let me rephrase: to become letters.
The letters and I have a place.
For the letters and me, when we’re in the right place, we’re annoyed by the metronome. It makes me yawn – and the letters too – the count to measure and square that demands order to release the first sound, in the first second of the recital. There, I swear, I get mixed up in the steps. In the steps’ beats and in the letters coming in against time, against rhythm, against the places where I should have seated them. I didn’t do it, I didn’t uncover them. So the letters slipped through my fingers. Because they are obviously more than the fingers – not discounting feet or hands – I lost my way between tongue and teeth, between what would have been a sneeze or a lioness’s roar.
I knew about the destination. I knew the steps to take to reach the destination and that the destination would go everywhere without me. The 74B – or was it A? – paces Admiral Reis from top to bottom, and, always against the clock, makes its presence felt on the straight street. I just needed to know what I knew to be vital: A or B? I had lost count of which one it was. After subtracting the numbers, I was missing the letters; and those, as I have already revealed, were difficult for me to add up, difficult to say out loud. Sometimes I don’t reach them, the letters, because they are so high, so confused they seem to me: they, not me. So I still didn’t know if it was A for south or B for east. It was necessary to know, and questions are made with sentences, which are made of words, which are made of letters. But the letters, to me, lose their meaning. They take too long to reach my tongue and my teeth, and in their haste to arrive at the same time – not to fail what was promised – they trample over each other in the last second as if there were no more seconds after this one. One letter was missing from the destination. Once that issue was deciphered, I would be sure: the destination knows what it’s doing.
The 74B – or was it A? – was adept at making exactly the same journey every day. They told me it was, and because I’m easy to believe, I waited without reservations. Those, the reservations, I kept to myself in my silence. A…? Or B…? I got confused with the letters because that’s how they are, confusing. But in my silence, things went smoother. I closed my eyes tightly and rehearsed the line. My lips, my tongue, and my teeth were working on the case. I drew up the question to ask for when the time C (or was it Z?) arrived. For when, in no time at all, the moment came for me to speak up and ask without fear, without stumbling, and out loud whether that 74 was going to stop at Cesário Verde.
My destination, which I could already see around the corner, was dressed in yellow. It glided with hiccups – depending on roadblocks or other palettes of colors – and that comforted me. When the road and the colors finally gave it a break, the 74B stopped in front of me. I respected it for being so tall – like the letters – and for knowing exactly where it was going, fearlessly displaying the destination that gave it its name. “Does the 74B stop at Cesário Verde?” – that was the question. I wouldn’t even mention the A to make the chances of biting words shorter. Simple and straightforward, this was the question to ask, and I had already practiced it in my silence that is home to me.
But when finally, finally it was time to speak: nothing. The struggle was fierce between Aces and tongues, between teeth and numbers, between more Aces and I don’t even know how many thousand letters that I hardly know and only by sight. A huge mustache, in a crumpled white shirt, in a huge yellow rectangle was in a hurry to get back on the road and close the service at its Z hour – or was it C? – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the question didn’t want to be asked, so the answer traveled without me. Maybe that was my destiny, but I would never know.
When the letters get mixed up like this, I feel like forgetting them. Not wanting to know anything more about them because they, apparently, know little or nothing about me. That day, I don’t even know what my destiny was wearing. My eyes closed tightly so as not to reveal anything to the world, and I ordered my lips to commit to silence. Better this way. My destiny came anyway – because that’s how it works – and without demanding any letters from me, it asked me for a hug. I gave it without reflection, without grammar, without fear. Giving hugs is easy for me. It doesn’t ask for verbs or licenses, it doesn’t make me hiccup or stumble. Receiving hugs is easy for me. It doesn’t guess malice, it doesn’t notice lexicons, it doesn’t suppose possibilities. I don’t care either about which letter a hug starts with or whether the person who asked me for it had the same destiny as me. Maybe one day, I’ll know how to say hug as well as I know how to give and receive them. For now, however, what feels good to me is written with a glance, takes shape in drawings with fingers on the back, and rests shamelessly in words that I don’t need to say.
For she who gives the best hugs in the world.