Last night I dreamt I was walking. I was walking past people I thought were hideous. I felt guilty about seeing them like that. An obese lady with a goitre and three nets in her hand looked at me. Other than that, people just passed. It was quiet. It’s like, in the end, this crazy world would not happen. No one seemed to be disturbed. They were all walking. There were little white petals on the ground. I wasn’t trying to break them. It was all very well known to me. When I was a kid, my dad used to walk me in a stroller. How patient my father was. When I looked down, I saw that I was wearing a green sweater with a black and white line and patterns. The kind of sweater my grandmother would have worn. I was sauntering slower than I wanted. I put my hand on my face, and I didn’t recognize it, I had a rough beard. It’s me who can barely grow a moustache. I leaned against a fence and put my hand on my right back pocket. I found a lighter that wasn’t mine. I had cigarettes in my jacket pocket. I smiled. I’ve always enjoyed knowing I have cigarettes, no matter I smoke them or not. It’s finally over. I wanted to cry; I wanted to be sorry. I tried to enjoy it. I couldn’t even be happy. I have tried nothing. I took the bus and got off in the plain. It was the ugliest plain. It was the plain you see if you wake up from your sleep on the local bus. I wanted to scream, but the world ended so nicely that I couldn’t ruin it. I sat on the ground. I put my hand in the field and remembered a movie. When I looked at the cigarette, I saw that I hadn’t even passed half. I threw it away. From the field, we took a step on the road. I was hoping for a car to pass. Nothing was going through. People were probably with their own now that the world was over. I stopped. “Where are my folks?” I wondered. Before I answered past me, a girl passed by. I don’t know how old he was. I started crying. She looked at me like she was waiting for me to do something. I took off my shoes. The road was warm. I had a torn sock, and I was ashamed. She was the most beautiful girl in the world, and for the first time, I wanted this world not to end for her. She ran into the field. I could see it from afar. I screamed for her, but nothing could be heard. She came back to me. She was wearing an ugly dress. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I felt guilty for looking at her like that. She grabbed me with her lower lip, fingers, and pulled me towards her. It embarrassed me. I would run. I’m lying. There’s no way I wanted to get out of there. She made me look down. She had bruises. She told me they were from the bike. She caught a sparrow in the air and put it in my hands. She left and told me to let go of the sparrow. She’s gone. I sat on my ass. The sparrow wanted to run out of my hands, but I needed it. I was angry. It was mine. I started running. It hurt to run. My heart was beating so hard that I wanted it to stop; I didn’t want to disturb the others. It was morning, and I thought I’d wake them up. The others were probably asleep. Next to me was a building. The gentleman at the gate invited me in and scolded me. “I keep telling you it was better if you took root.” I walked down an aisle that was bifurcating in two. All along it was all kinds of doors. I opened one. I saw a room full of people watching an empty scene, smiling. The doorman asked me if I’d come in. “No, I’ll leave them. I don’t want to bother them,” I said. “Bury me in a river. Make myself water and always flow.” I don’t know if I said that or heard it somewhere. The end was near. I looked to the left and saw my mother. Of course, she had to be there. She was leaning against her golden matting when I was a kid. We looked at each other. She started crying. Mom rarely cries, just like me. But when she cries, she does it with all her being, just like me. She wasn’t crying for me; she knew I would be okay; she always knew, she was crying for herself. I gave him a cigarette from me. He thanked me with his eyes. He wasn’t thanking me for the cigarette. He pulled out the phone and told me to talk to my dad. I got it. I was on the phone with my dad quietly. We said nothing. I’m out of here. On the side of the road, on the plain, a man and a woman passed by. The woman looked at me once and then looked away in shame. God looked the way out. It was so simple. The end brought me no tears, no peace. The end wasn’t death. Death was always something that happened to others, never to me. I was expecting a cortège next to a man I’ve never met. Nothing like that. Just an old gentleman was standing propped up by a tree. He looked at me. - That’s it, that’s it. Did you expect more? - No, it was good. I answered after a break. I passed him and kept going. I was just walking. In front of me was a large field. I was just walking. From the front came an army of people I knew, loved and wished not to meet. I was just walking. They were running towards me. “Not today, I know”, I thought. I’ve always been more pathetic than I should. I put my hand under my shirt, on my right shoulder, like I always do. The army was running towards me. Stop making comparisons to war; life’s not a fight I argued myself. I laughed. In the end, I laughed.
