Unfinished

At the funeral there are friends who find the dead man thin and wasted. Of course, he’s wasted. We think about life, we are all just hanging by a thread, today we are here and tomorrow we are gone, but no one tells the truth, that is, that the guy over there, Thomas, would never have asked to come into the world, and he lived all his years without knowing what his goal was, just to end up like this, stiff in the coffin.

Because, that guy over there, Thomas, was a poet.

He went down to the sea in the morning, where the foam whipped and gurgled around the rocks, and wrote verses. Then he put his moccasins back on, went up the slope and went to work at the warehouse.

Thomas was no longer young, but for him the last poem was still the first. For him it was still the first day of work, that temporary, petty job that he didn’t like. He just felt fresh out of his studies, waiting to dive into real life, the life that gives you joy, satisfaction, pleasure.

Instead his skin was gray, and his eyes no longer saw, especially his left one. His wife, Pina, did not even recognize him when she came home in the evening.

Yet he waited, confident, he waited for life.

There was one thing he did not even dare to think, a sentence that he could not even formulate, while Pina was already talking about retirement and grandchildren.

What sense would it have, he wondered, if I died now, what sense would it have, this unfinished, wasted life of mine?

And, inside himself, he flapped like a bird in a cage, raged like a madman in his straitjacket, while, in silence, with extreme calm, he marked the paints and counted the cans.

First, you wait and you know you will succeed, then you wait and you are a little less sure, but, you say, it is not possible, there must be a purpose, a goal, a landing. Eventually you realize that you are giving up, that really no one will ever read your poems.

Then dying isn’t that bad.

He cried, at night, Thomas, and clenched his fists.

Perhaps because he sensed it, perhaps because the cigarettes had yellowed his fingers and drowned his voice. As many are saying now, he brought it on himself. The thing inside his lung grew, disintegrated his alveoli, suffocated him. He died looking at the window, I know because I was there. Pina was silent, in a corner, with bills in hand.

So I went over there, where he kept the poems. Handwritten, because he didn’t like typing, because he had remained at the time of high school. I took the papers from the drawer, put them in the bag.

And now, Thomas, it would be nice to tell you that I have found a publisher, that the world will read you posthumously, that Pina and the boys will get rich with your verses. This story would make sense, would have a happy ending.

But the world does not work like that, the world is not of the deluded, like us.

Tomorrow morning I will go to the sea, where you used to go, as soon as it gets light.

I won’t need to read your words because I know them, as you know mine. We exchanged rhymes, advice, images.

I will take off my shoes, as you did, and immerse the papers one by one in the water. I will stand by and watch as the ink melts, and the words will disappear.

Your words, Thomas, the words born on the sea, which the sea will collect.

And my words, the words of unknown poets, of hidden souls, of unfinished lives.