The Scent of Your Breath

Thirty-one

Why do you beat your red-tipped wings like that, lovely dragonfly? Settled on that white wall with your black body you look like a word on a badly written page. Why do your wings swell each time you breathe? It’s as though you were brooding hatred, rancor, rage. You’ve settled just a few centimeters from his photograph…ah no, dragonfly, we don’t do that. I come over to you and take his photograph and put it to my chest and you look at me, disillusioned and in tears, as I dart glances back at you, likewise full of hatred, rancor, and rage. Are you going mad now? Your flight is uneven now and imprecise; I see you’re running out of breath. If I show you his photograph from a distance, what will you do, thank me?

I won’t kill you, don’t worry. I’d rather see you die slowly.

I know I shouldn’t have slid that horrible message under the door, dragonfly, but what do you expect me to do? It’s written in my blood that I must destroy everything that wants to destroy me.

Don’t say anything, because you don’t know anything. You don’t know what it is to be abandoned, you know nothing of the battle of love. Don’t you understand that each time you immerse your big green eyes in his you’re stripping me of part of my life, the air that I breathe? If you take away my breath, he won’t be able to love it anymore, he won’t be able to smell it.

My mother, the same mother I’m talking to now, told me that dragonflies must be killed and forgotten. But I want to see you suffer a little; I want to play with your life and keep you hanging on this thin little thread, like a sadistic Fate.

I’ll tell you about that time we went to the river. It was an amazing day, the rocks were sparkling and the plants showed no sign of death or decomposition, and everything was big, wonderful, strong.

I’ve always been used to swimming in the sea, battling with the waves, feeling that exciting fear filling me up when the blue was so dark and so deep that I couldn’t see anything. I’ve always confronted infinite spaces, with vague horizons. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. In my heart I wanted to swim in something visible, clear, with precise contours that I could see, that I could cling to.

So when Thomas suggested going to the river, I gave a leap of joy and kissed him and whispered in his ear, “Don’t chicken out — today I want to know that we’ll make love in the river,” and he said, “We’ll see,” as though it were a challenge.

Our lovemaking really was lovely and joyous and playful, with the water splashing off our warm bodies in a thousand glittering droplets. And I felt like a mermaid with her Triton; we were king and queen of the water, of that lonely place, that beauty.

Or I could tell you about that time when I was in a hotel, in some remote place in South America. I felt ill and I was shivering with cold, although my body was fine and my heartbeat was regular. Without a word he drew me to him and talked to me gently, and then my tears slowly melted on my skin and made way for my smile. And then he told me that I could, that night, forget who I was, what I was for the people out there. He whispered that I was the woman he loved and nothing more, that everything else was only a silly joke.

I could tell you that I love everything about him and I wouldn’t be lying.

Can you explain to me why the hell you have two little red dots on the ends of your two wings? Did you think you would pass unnoticed, did you want to show yourself off, did you want to look seductive?

When the keys rattle behind the door she understands that the time has come to go. This, I think, is just a warning.