Diego

I

Around now

and here there's no princess

Micomicona, no Sancho

either just me and his name's

stuffing

{the humid tedious of modern life, so daunting into a tilt of nothings worthwhile bothering when not flushing it}

How come I

knew Diego's

- news?

was that his real name, his

real postulate of life's conjectures

skipping through unknown

fingers, female

at home

- absent

the scent of

practicing the read

the fingers' read

verbalizing the

frustration

of pages

turning into

scars, yellow

somehow

pee, people, portable

nightmares

brushing the inside

of any

similarities

between him and the personage of Cervantes;

were there?

{yes, both spoke Castilian and drunk stories and surely wine}

II

There was no princess Micomicona alluring his steep nights, no Sancho with two bicycles waiting downstairs, while leaning against the warmth breath of an hot Adis-Abeba junction, falling like a monument to blandness;

there was a woman, though {no cooking}

my friend drunk

all the time even when

busy with his private

Spanish gatherings

indifferent to appearances

moved by one

or more enigmatic causes, passionate with life, at times eccentric, always wearing

a beard and glasses

ready to clash with

would I recognize him in his underwear hanging from his 2nd floor neighbor's balcony, ready for dispatch or rescue in-between a Mondays to Wednesdays Pandora's box love and a rest-of-the-week Amstel integration tour?

I met him through his woman, so he became my friend.

Last time I saw her, Oporto airport, she was walking another guy, kinda of a weird situation, you know. She told me Diego was dead.

{I could hear the uplands blood circulating in the background of his veins coding the years and distance gone by into minutes of tempered silence,

never said}

Expressed sympathy

for Diego, the one, temporary

as sadness and

memory and

love.

© 2014, José Eduardo Coelho