It's cold
This is my first piece of creative writing ever. It’s five years old. A professor asked us to do an experiment with automatic writing, that is, writing the first thing that comes to mid, or rather, writing without thinking. The Surrealists liked that. Later on, the professor read a few in class and he read mine with his pretentious “this is poetry so pay attention” intonation, which made me confident in my ability to write as long as I didn’t take myself seriously.
I never forgot the piece; later, I wrote it down in several slightly different versions. A couple of phrases and the person I was talking about belong to my teens. Later on I have come to despise any writing that is confessional, intimate, or with a strong look of having been improvised, but the first poem is like the first love, isn’t it?
The original is Spanish, scroll down for the English version.
Tengo frío. El frío me sale de dentro cuando Ángel me mira. Cuando está con las demás, Ángel se ríe, pero conmigo no, cuando está conmigo me hace preguntas, o quizá son preguntas que yo oigo aunque él no las haga, y las contesto y hablo sin parar hasta que las palabras sólidas que salen de mis labios forman una cadena, una espiral alrededor de mis caderas, con púas que me obligan a seguir hablando.
Los ojos de Ángel son telarañas pegajosas que me enredan, y yo lucho, pero no sirve de nada, estoy atrapada y siento cómo me observa, soy su presa. Los ojos de Ángel son espejos de mercurio resbaladizo. Me gustaría entrar en ese lago de mercurio gris venenoso, ahogarme, y poder olvidar este frío.
Pero a Ángel le gusta que yo pase frío.
I´m cold. I feel cold comes from the inside out when Angel looks at me. When he’s with the other girls, Angel laughs, but not with me, when he’s with me he asks me questions, or maybe those are questions that I hear even if he doesn’t ask them, and I answer them and talk incessantly until the solid words that come out of my mouth make a chain, a spiral around my hips, with thorns that force me to keep on talking.
Angel’s eyes are sticky spiderwebs that tangle me, and I struggle, but it’s useless, I’m trapped and I feel ho he stares at me. I’m his prey. Angel’s eyes are mirror of slippery mercury. I would like to walk into that lake of poison, drown and forget this cold.
But Angel likes me to be cold.
I never forgot the piece; later, I wrote it down in several slightly different versions. A couple of phrases and the person I was talking about belong to my teens. Later on I have come to despise any writing that is confessional, intimate, or with a strong look of having been improvised, but the first poem is like the first love, isn’t it?
The original is Spanish, scroll down for the English version.
Tengo frío. El frío me sale de dentro cuando Ángel me mira. Cuando está con las demás, Ángel se ríe, pero conmigo no, cuando está conmigo me hace preguntas, o quizá son preguntas que yo oigo aunque él no las haga, y las contesto y hablo sin parar hasta que las palabras sólidas que salen de mis labios forman una cadena, una espiral alrededor de mis caderas, con púas que me obligan a seguir hablando.
Los ojos de Ángel son telarañas pegajosas que me enredan, y yo lucho, pero no sirve de nada, estoy atrapada y siento cómo me observa, soy su presa. Los ojos de Ángel son espejos de mercurio resbaladizo. Me gustaría entrar en ese lago de mercurio gris venenoso, ahogarme, y poder olvidar este frío.
Pero a Ángel le gusta que yo pase frío.
I´m cold. I feel cold comes from the inside out when Angel looks at me. When he’s with the other girls, Angel laughs, but not with me, when he’s with me he asks me questions, or maybe those are questions that I hear even if he doesn’t ask them, and I answer them and talk incessantly until the solid words that come out of my mouth make a chain, a spiral around my hips, with thorns that force me to keep on talking.
Angel’s eyes are sticky spiderwebs that tangle me, and I struggle, but it’s useless, I’m trapped and I feel ho he stares at me. I’m his prey. Angel’s eyes are mirror of slippery mercury. I would like to walk into that lake of poison, drown and forget this cold.
But Angel likes me to be cold.