To her dead ones
You awaited my death like someone waiting for a cold beer. That night, I arrived with torn up clothes and a scraped up body, full of blood and dirt. The fingernails that had dug into me were still stuck in my ribs. You ordered them to pick me up from the street as if you were asking them to pick up trash. I remember the distant sound of the bells, one, two, three violations, four hooded men; five, six, seven, yes, it must have been seven o’clock at night when they went to play pool, and they abandoned me on the side of the highway, half buried; there, among the town’s trash. I remember my father’s eyes, sparkling and tender, that looked at me lovingly: “One day a good and hard-working man will ask you to be his wife and you, very much in love, will tell him yes, and you’ll make a beautiful family.” I didn’t have kids. Only this memory, which isn’t enough to count the wounds or sunrises.
Translated from: ¡Basta! 100 mujeres en contra la violencia de género (Enough! 100 Women Against Gender Violence, 2014). P.38.
Carmen Nozal is a writer and poet and the author of several books.
Translation by Amanda Petersen, Guest Editor of TBI’s Freedom of Expression Blog for the week of October 31.
