The Murmur of Bees

by Sofía Segovia

There are no ghosts in this house, my father would say to me. What you hear are the echoes it has kept to remind us of all those who’ve been here.

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

I know a memory from reality, even if I grow more attached to my memories than to reality with each day.

In life, only potential was free. The outcome, the achievement, the aim came at a high cost, which she was prepared to pay.

Beatriz repeated it to herself every day: I am a grown woman, I am a wife, I am a mother.

But it was one thing to say it with her head, and another for her heart to believe it and stop sending pain signals to her soul.

In her world, a woman never left her parents behind, even when the parents left her.

The miracle would have been if those arrogant fools with the fate of the country in their hands had listened in time to the voices of the experts. Now it was too late.

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.

For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return: as certain for living cells as it was for any heap of bricks, whether Roman, Mayan, or Linarense.

Tell me what you see with those eyes, Simonopio. Tell me how far they see, when they probe me. How deep into my body, into my soul.

which is what mamas do: they lecture you because they love you, because if they didn’t do it, who would put us right, Son?

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

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.”