Crooked Plow

by Itamar Vieira Junior

When you were able to hold it in your hands again, you saw yourself reflected with that same radiance in your eyes, both the girl and the woman, the innocent and the guilty.

The edge of the blade had split your life from that point onward. And each time you polished the blade and saw yourself in that mirror, you knew your life could be split again.

No one ever asked where you’d been; what for? They knew you wouldn’t respond.

You felt that the sound of the world had always been your voice.

“It’s only right for Estela to feel in her bones what I’m going through.”

The emptiness she was feeling seemed to expand with time, opening a pit inside of her that only got deeper.

The hardest truth for her to face was that nothing, not even winning the dispute for the land, would bring her husband back.

Salu, who had never truly owned anything, never gave up on the dream of having a proper house, a dream she’d cherished with her husband.

Belonísia held her sister’s hands in hers. They both closed their eyes and shared the moment, surrendering to that gesture and experiencing something that might be called forgiveness.

But the people have forgotten their encantada, her name is no longer spoken, and so she begins to forget who she is, and the fateful hour approaches.

I’d forgotten the power of riding a body; how good it was to immerse myself again in the rivers of blood, in the fire of a bosom pulsating with life, in clouded eyes, in desires and freedom.