There we were in the middle of the afternoon, all looking at the horizon. That was our last outing with the whole group. Carlos had said he was leaving the country the following week and Antonio would do it in a fortnight. My trip was planned for the next few months, with Anna and Michell. Only Luis was left, who did not want to leave the country, but who accepted that things were bad and that there was very little hope left. There, on the beach, we were silent, perhaps afraid to say our last words, to damage that moment which was clearly a farewell.

Source

Since school we had always been very close. At first it was Carlos, Antonio, Luis and I; then they joined the group Anna and Michell. From the beginning we joined with the firm purpose of being friends, being united, maintaining an optimal educational level, but very especially, to support each other in good times and bad. We knew that teamwork would make us stand out, so we sought to work on our weaknesses or failures and exploit our strengths individually and then use them in the group. I was good at math, Luis and Anna at finance, Carlos and Michell at mechanics. Professional success was always assured, not only by the dedication of each of us, but by the support we had in ourselves. But we never foresaw that Venezuela, a prosperous country full of future, would collapse, fall into a coma, die before our eyes.

Source

That day we had already drunk three bottles of liquor and our feelings of nostalgia were on the surface. In an instant we talked about a school episode and then there was a great silence. Then another thought about our last outing to Playa Medina and silence came again. Sadness was a guest that we did not want to accept, to give her a place in that evening, but like every impertinent guest, it appeared in every word, in every memory, in every look. We tried to conduct the conversation in a trivial and easy way, without squeezing the throat, without scratching the skin and without squeezing the soul. We bordered, like a trapeze artist, on innocuous subjects trying not to fall into words like airport, migration, country, exile, strangeness, friendship, nostalgia; of not seeing in the rearview mirror our lives together.

Source

When the last bottle was almost empty and we were all dying of dreams, Luis, in the middle of the silence, began to speak. He said:

_Once I saw on TV or at the movies, the story of a woman who was walking in the middle of a snowstorm. The woman was carrying a baby in her arms. Against the weather, the woman was walking slowly, looking for a place to take shelter from the infamous weather. The camera, in that instant, also focused on the image of a bird, terrified of the cold, almost asleep, that was in its nest. Then the camera turned around and returned to the female image. Every step the woman took, it was as if she were carrying a very heavy burden. The wind dragged her backwards and she tried to stand up and move forward. There was a moment when the woman remained static and almost as if by accident, she opened the blanket she was carrying in her arms. That's as far as the camera went. With the mother's gaze, we could see that the baby she was holding had died.

There was no crying. Only the camera focused from afar. Then the woman fell, and sat on the icy, gray pavement. The camera also focused on the tree, and there was no longer the little bird, but an empty nest.

After that story, we were all silent. Luis, as if from a previous life and as if someone had not understood what he had said, sentenced:

At this moment I feel like that woman and like that bird. I no longer have any reason to fight: the nest is empty.

Source

The next morning, we each woke up and made the return journey in silence. In each of us there was not only the imminent goodbye but also the sense of the story Luis had told us. We knew that our silence shouted out some questions and that there were cowardly days, like that one, in which in the end we all agreed on the same fears and preferred to stay on the edge: of the words, of the embrace, of the abyss. Deep down we knew that out there we would also need strength to go against the wind and that from now on, more than a smile on our face, we would carry a scar on our chest.

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Written by: @nancybriti

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