Member-only story
The life imagined always seems far away.
It is distant, across the screen. It seems so difficult to anchor ourselves in the present.
I fly across the world to be close to what once was near,
then far away,
and now near for a short while.
Is the distance I am trying to cover an emotional distance?
The river is wide:
It separates. It unites.
The river is brown:
Carries the sedimentation of forests and jungles
nurtures the ocean like chocolate milk
making a young child dream
to drink the river whole
to swim in it to get his fill.
The river crossing is short.
But once upon a time, it was long.
It takes the fast ferry about an hour
to unite the two countries, Uruguay and Argentina
the emptiness of water
It must have seemed like an abyss,
two or three hundred years ago
smugglers flourished
taking silver from the Spanish Crown
from the Alto Peru
the mines of Potosi
smuggling it to Brazil
to be embezzled by the…
