The Murmur of Bees

by Sofía Segovia

I’m made of everything that touched my senses during that time and entered the part of my brain where I keep my memories.

Then he learned that, in war, even modernity evaporated.

She counted on the certainty that all the promises life had made her were, or would be, fulfilled in proportion to the work and effort invested. In life, only potential was free. The outcome, the achievement, the aim came at a high cost, which she was prepared to pay.

In her world, a woman took her parents’ home with her wherever she went: to school, on a foreign voyage, on honeymoon, to bed with her husband, to the birth of her child, to the table each day to teach her children good posture and good manners, and—she believed—she would even take them to her deathbed. In her world, a woman never left her parents behind, even when the parents left her.

Itching’s a sign of healing, his mother always said. Well, now he had his own version: If you’re bored, you’re getting better.

He had seen the look of relief and satisfaction on his godfather Francisco’s face when he had woken. His godfather proudly told him that he had cured him with his sinapism, and Simonopio would never refute it: one should never contradict an act of love.

I never saw the machine in its temporary home at La Florida, but sometimes I imagine that the rhythm of my life is based on the rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat that would always accompany me years later, from my first days in the womb and until adulthood, ensuring my mama’s clearheadedness. My heart, your automobile, time—it all moves forward and ages at that rhythm. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat.

while he had never been a silly child, there was always a sparkle in his eyes that only a child can have, whether it be of innocence or of blind faith in everything and everyone.

He was the interesting part of my life.

He would no longer live his life stooping, servile. The day had come when the mule lifted its head and refused to recognize the boss, because he knew, like he had always known, that nobody tells a landowner what to do; that owners do not suffer hunger, hardship, or worries, which is why they grow tall and straight and look everyone squarely in the eyes.

“Life offers no guarantees. To anyone. It waits for nobody. It has no consideration for anyone.”

one night, between one sweet-sounding song and another, she understood that, while life offers no guarantees, sometimes it does offer gifts; and understanding that, accepting it even without being fully aware of it, the bitterness, the grief, and the deep wound of Beatriz Cortés, now the widow of Morales, began to heal, and her determined streak began to reemerge.

she feigned strength, as she would do for a long time, and by feigning it she would end up believing it, and by believing it, she would make it reality.

Tell them to walk in the shade. To listen with their eyes, to see with their skin, and to feel with their ears, because life speaks to us all and we just need to know and wait to listen to it, see it, feel it.”