Historia

Part I. The Unforgotten

When I was young, I believed in a certain superstition,
a fairy tale that kept my mind at ease.
If one traced a word upon the palm of their right hand,
that word will never be forgotten.

And thus, my little fantasy became truth,
for I followed that tradition every day.
Every word seemed to make my brain bigger and smarter.
I loved that feeling.
To this day, there are five beautiful words that I hold dear to my heart.

I was nine when I wrote the word labyrinth on my palm.
I lost myself in a rose bush garden. To my small and frail body, the garden looked like a maze
It reminded me of the rose bushes in Alice in Wonderland, only this was no wonderland.
I felt trapped in between rose and thorn,
between life and death,
between empathy and sloth,
between pride and shame.
Even now, we are all trapped, swinging on a pendulum from one to the other.
Back then I couldn't understand why such opposites exist in our lives.
We can't have rose without thorn, we can't have life without death,
we can show empathy without sloth, we can't have pride without shame.
But why? On the spectrum, they are so far apart from each other.
Such concepts might as well be on either sides of the galaxy.
And my heart will always be lost, sifting through every corner of this Labyrinth,
in search of answers I may never find.

I was eleven when I wrote the word resplendence on my palm.
My mother used it to describe God,
but I found use for the word in other things,
things like nature. The trees that withstand cold winters for as long as they can,
and flourish within the spring.
"Resplendence means something dazzling in appearance, something splendid.
What is so dazzling about a blasted tree?"
I forgive and pity the woman and her ignorance,
for she does not see the world I see.
If she did, she would not take a single sunrise for granted,
If she did, every howling wind would be her friend,
If she did, her daily routine would make her sick,
and she would yearn for a different horizon,
for a new and brighter sun.

I was eighteen when I wrote the word forbearance on my palm.
I was an impatient young woman, dwindling at the edge of my adolescence,
thrashing and kicking for any sense of fruitful adulthood. But naturally
I was held back by the elders of a thousand years.
Their world is a world of chain linked fences and concrete streets of black white and grey,
But I thirst for color, I thirst for life.
And I grew sick of my mother dragging me backwards in time,
while the other grandfather clocks swayed in motion with her.
My thirst for color rang true, so much so that the back of her hand struck me for the first time,
But with all the strength I can summon,
I hung my head down, and surrendered.

I was twenty two when I wrote the world ephemeral on my palm.
And I would never forget that moment, lying by her bedside.
That same mother I've hated for so long, I begged her to breathe.
It's quite ironic, I told her she was living in such old ice ages,
and yet ephemeral means short-lived.
Yes, she lived too short.
I wanted her to witness so much of my life. I'm too young to be alone in the world.
I took her motherhood for granted. And I regret that so very much.
And throughout the years of her raising me higher, I learned nothing from her.
I resisted learning from her. I regret that as well.
Now that I'm older and alone,
now that I have a grasp of adulthood at the expense of my own mother's pride,
Who am I?
What am I to do with my life?
Who was this woman to me, really?
Have I ever known her at all?