Making Sense
Mariana Meireles Curado
Three houses stand on top of the hill in a neat little row; step inside the one in the middle if you want life to be something other than long. To reach them you need to follow the old town’s defensive wall and I should probably warn you that in the world I’m building wives spend their days keeping the village safe while husbands stay in weaving joy. Tell me about all the things you’ve learned today as soon as I get home. Shall I go first? Today I poured the enemy a drink and we sat together looking for common ground. They’re scared for their grandchildren who are yet to be vaccinated, yet to be christened, in for a shock when they find out how much bureaucracy is involved in all great adventures. I learned that we share a great fear of three things: His judgement, prolonged bad weather, and being stuck with distant relatives you have very little in common with. Then just as I was starting to feel like maybe all the fighting was futile, I asked them to think of a number between one and ten and before I could say anything else, they went: four. Now, please, your thoughts on everything. Today the melons smelled so sweet you almost failed to notice they were rotten. The donkey who pulls the fruit car up and down the narrow road and the man who owns both stop by every day and even when you don’t take anything, he insists that you keep the receipt. He says you never know and because we have to agree, we obediently pocket the paper records of all the things we didn’t buy. In the mornings the old urban planner who went mad from boredom after finishing square one and square two spends around twenty minutes shouting obscenities, but they don’t sound threatening to trained ears. If I could ever afford to be afraid, I’d fear that soon these tales will live too far away and we’ll have to count on our own crow’s feet to remind us of how seagulls used to sound through the open windows.
