<aside>
</aside>
July 2023 · Christian Ives Solis
RECORD XV — July 2023: hearing
The problem with explanations is that they almost never come alone. They bring an audience.
We had the same friends, and that made it almost impossible to speak without contaminating the air. Not out of malice, but because of ecosystem: when your friends are also theirs, the space stops being neutral. Conversation turns into hallway.
We went to eat completos at a Chilean place: Perro Pako. Walking in there meant recovering the internal language for a while. The noise of trays striking the counter, the smell of warm bread, the freshly mashed avocado. That was why I went: for a place where the body would recognize the terrain before the mind did. Camilo was beside me. Amaro and Carlota sat across from us.
We were eating when Carlota let the sentence out, with the natural ease of someone who believes she is making a sweet joke:
—You have to marry Camilo.
The air at the table stopped. My back stiffened against the chair. I had an earlier line, simple and old: if nationality and papers ever entered the equation, I already knew whom I was going to marry. Hanna.
I said it right there, without raising my voice and without intending to hurt anyone. But some promises do not compete; they weigh.
<aside>
</aside>
My completo stayed there, untouched in front of me. It stopped being food and began cooling on the plate, turned into an absurd witness. I was trying to smile, to hold the moment together, but underneath I could feel that soft pressure of a group drafting your future without you ever having opened the document. Food does not ask for emotional coherence, but the group does.
From the back of my mind, above the noise of the place, Brenda delivered her verdict: