Wait a few hours before you talk about me

Wait a few hours before you talk about me

Yeslando de Jesús González Bracho

I died yesterday. It was a wet and desperate death. I had to get up many times to draw water. Someone once wrote that one has to choose when to die. The shadow suddenly arrived with the sickle between its bones and I did not refuse her. She surely spoke badly about me. She looked tired and sad from looking for me so much.

I remember the first was on the afternoon of January 2001, precisely the first day of that year. A mixture of iron mixed between plastic and paste covered my body. What a disgrace! the gossipers shouted. I only managed to hear the siren of the ambulance and the noise of the doctors while they dragged the stretcher… his spine is “made of gum” as my wife used to say. She was on holidays in Sucre and I had stayed to take a break from the December festivities. Anyway, I ended up dying that day, I think at ten past six. It was an unannounced death.

The old woman in black forgot to announce her arrival and was left to grind her yellowish teeth after the doctor on duty slammed the door shouting, “He’s alive! Miracle…miracle! I had never even believed in the miracles of José Gregorio Hernández. And I am a believer”.

Later came successive deaths that I did not plan but that the dark grim reaper decided for as if she had power over my life. Another accident, another first of January, the astute black woman negotiated my departure with my relatives, but she was left empty-handed. Hey, it’s not racism, she wears black!

After that came the day of the cerebral stroke and she almost succeeded when she tricked me on a path of no return where many friends of mine already went. It was also at dawn in January 2014.
The penultimate was Corona Virus. Coming from Colombia, a damn old man pounced on my wife and me with the excuse of the carelessness of the Venezuelans. The fool hugged me. When I got home, I had a fever and a scratchy throat. She could not. I wasn’t on the smudged list that she re-wrote every day.

And look, she has made many attacks on me, like when the neighbour threatened to kill us by shooting us in the forehead and setting us on fire. He even knelt and crucified himself. Unfortunate shitty “cañaderos” conspired with the guajiros and death to, “make it go easy on them.”

But it was last night when it was decided. She dolled herself up to come for me. Innocently she was going into the trap with the approval of the neighbours who had dealt with her. The gossip, the parties for Carmencita, who thought she was still fifteen years old, and Raíza the vicious fat woman, the outrages for Yoleiva, who had also been harmed for four years. They wanted to drive her crazy and me dead. I was not willing and neither was my wife.

These have been bitter days… I share with the saints but don’t sleep with them because the hammock bursts and the wires come out of the mattress. And I am a believer! No, I’m not ready for you to talk about my coffin. How beautiful his smile was! His face too! Such good people! And I am a believer!

The dirty black one is crying under the matapalo and my wife and I are on our way to the land. Wait for me if you want… this time it’s not my turn either.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Education. He also has a PhD from the Pedagogical University. He writes under the pseudonym “Goya”.