Agnosia, aphasia, apraxia.

Across the lawn lives a little girl with twinkling, mahogany eyes and charcoal hair. She gathers pansies from her back garden, and brings them over to me, her pearly hands trembling, cheeks blooming in rosy reticence. She does this every other day, and there are times when a vague sense of familiarity bewilders me, like the erupting lava which dribbles mercilessly from Earth's luscious lips. And such devilish pandemonium cradles me like a child, and I succinctly nix the cotton on my head and the traces time drew on my face, edging it with crumpling wisdom. 

For I have never met this girl, I have never known this girl. This girl, a blotchy speck on my creamy sheet of blankness, a splash of swarthy ink I idly long to hold, but leaks mercilessly between my tortuous fingers.

This girl with eyes of mahogany and charcoal hair. This girl who tentatively nourishes my sentiments with staring viola faces. This girl I have never met. This girl I have never known.

This girl I have always loved. 

Addah Monoceros.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This text comprises a metaphor involving a grandmother and her loving granddaughter who regularly visits her in order to trigger her fated, perishing memory. As a physician, I published it today in order to raise awareness as far as medical investigation is concerned, for Alzheimer's disease is not to be taken lightly. My sincere gratitude to all my readers for spreading the word. I genuinely hope science never ceases to upsurge, boosting new treatments and hence promoting global health and welfare. 

Carta de un toro a un taurino.

Tú, taurino; tú, que dices amar la tradición más que a nada en el mundo, que defiendes tu cultura por encima de todo, que te enorgulleces de las idiosincrasias de tu país de origen. Tú que haces alarde de satírica desfachatez y dices llamarte "humano". 

Tú, taurino; tú, que te regodeas con mi estoico calvario, tú que te apropias de una injuriosa moral, y disfrazas su encarnizada esencia con injustificables excusas. 

¿Qué te he hecho yo? ¿Qué te he hecho yo, para que desfigures mis sollozos, para que mutiles mi talle, para que degrades mi ser? ¿Qué te he hecho yo, para que te proclames mi superior, ataviando tu saña con una ficticia osadía de la que yo apenas puedo hacer acopio? Pues tu sadismo se agazapa tras un velo de adjetivos irrisorios, aquellos que hacen alarde de intrepidez, de valentía. Valentía, como si fuera yo la bestia, y no al revés. 

Tú, taurino; tú, que me privas de una vida apacible y mansa, para regocijarte vilmente a costa de tormentos ajenos. Tú, que haces que este sureño paraje europeo se sonroje con el tinte carmesí de la sangre que me usurpas. Tú, que silencias la etérea hermosura de tu tierra con el eco de mi último gañido.

Pero, ¿sabes, taurino? No rogaré clemencia. Esperar compasión por parte de un ser carente de piedad resulta un lance de incalculable envergadura. Mas mi corazón aún late, trémulo y heroico. Acompasa el augurio de un mundo que yo ya no moraré, pero que se adivina mejor, un mundo donde el bien del prójimo constituirá la mayor de las eminencias; un mundo donde el placer correrá a cargo de la dicha y de la generosidad, de la empatía y del respeto.

Te perdono, taurino. Perdonaré cada estocada, cada lanceo, cada vítore a expensas del sufrimiento en el que tú crees encontrar deleite. Y lo hago en nombre de una sociedad en la que tú, taurino, te despojarás de tu venda y comprenderás que, cual joven que presume de madurez pero teme envejecer, la vida es demasiado fugaz como para empobrecerla con una lanza en las manos. Y mis ojos, ciegos ya, aún divisan la nacarada promesa de dicha sociedad, más justa, e infinitamente más bella.

Una sociedad en la que, por fin, podrás llamarte "humano".

Addah Monoceros.

If only.

If only I could stop dreaming. Life would be so much easier - an effortless, soothing vagrancy. Some heavenly, almost holy maze I would willfully get tangled in, hoggishly inhaling its fragrant wheezes of reminiscence. 

If only I could stop remembering. A shortcoming ineptitude to recall the joy my sanity is heir to. Blissfully unaware of the beauties tomorrow beholds for me. The puerile inexperience, cherished in a womb of stargazing wishes. The impeccable innocence, the stainless purity. 

If only I could stop hoping. I could positively do without this infatuate yearning, this preposterous conviction that the future is, indeed, a living personage, a sapient seraph who consistently whispers in our minds, yielding us with ulterior thoughts I once believed taught me to rip out the evil vestiges of my feral self.

And yet, I treasure my dreams with a tenderness so powerful, it avidly engulfs my most rooted memoirs, my striving aspirations. I embrace every fault, every mistake, every lapse I once surrendered to. And I mold them into loving replicas of my utopian flair, and I doll them up with benevolence, saucing them with boundless sweetness.

If only I could hope for more. If only I could remember more. If only I could dream more. If only I could love more. 

Addah Monoceros.

Catathymia.

And in your unblemished infirmity I spot your flawless glitches. And I gaze in yearning awe, tricking myself into believing I can, indeed, drink you up through my eyes, tipple you down my ravenous throat and into my body, deeply inside, where horizons die, where your submerged fiber of alluring beauty lies within my grasping mania. And my lustful devotion strives for more, appeased by the hooking hideousness I inescapably succumb to. And I revel in its throbbing monstrosity, and it bruises me, stings me, snitches the blood out of me, drop by drop, tear by tear, heartbeat by heartbeat. And my emptiness vacuums the nagging remains of my soul, as I reach out for one more swig of the vice my mind is blind to. 

And I love it. And I endure it. And I desire it. 

Addah Monoceros.