“Every poem is a letter.
Every poem holds a tale…”
These thoughts crossed Caique´s mind as he whistled while walking down the street.
“I don´t mean a regular, beginning, middle and end tale” he thought to himself.
Poems hold on to something else.
As a fragment of one´s own life story. Let´s say, for instance, the day he sat at the bench, at the square, next to Mr. Angelo, the best guitar player in the world, at least the best one he had ever met. Or still, as the new poem that just now drew itself in his imagination, as he tried to reach back to the moment he found out about the powerful combination of words and music. Thinking about music he raised his eyes up to the sky looking for birds. To think that birds can fly far away as words in the wind. Listening to birds singing he realized their voices could be so diverse as people´s speech. Clouds… Poems can just pop up in one´s mind. The true secret is to know how to hold on to them.
Caique ran until he reached the square.
He chose the empty bench, under an old, familiar, welcoming tree. He took his notebook out of his backpack. He opened the white, empty page. He looked at the sky and drew a poem…
He smiled feeling good about himself.
He sighed.
He stood up and took his way to school. As he walked through the square, he thought about all the good things that had happened last year.
At school he was now seen as someone who had made a dream come true. His friends and teachers called him The Poet. It made him feel shy sometimes and he told them:
“How can I be a poet if I can't even rhyme?”
Caique saw poetry as something that just sprouted out of his mind, opening up his eyes to see things around him as if they were brand new…
Nothing ever bored him, because according to his own, particular way of seeing life, there was no such a thing as boredom. What would be the opposite of being bored? Being cool? What´s the difference between one and the other? Being cool and being boring were just about the same, so he thought.
Caique´s poetry was not only about beautiful things, such as the flight of birds, or even their beautiful songs. If there was one thing he could do quite well was to make a poem out of joke, a poem out of a drawing, or still a very sad poem just to make someone cry and smile at the same time. Empty poems also pleased him. Silent ones too.
Poems were everywhere to be seen.
Whenever Caique recited a poem, everyone stopped to listen to him. But there were always the ones who liked to make fun out of him. People who kept on telling him poetry is just useless at the end of the day.
Caique liked to reply:
Is our life useful after all?
What are we here for anyhow?
One day he just thought to himself:
Every living being is a poem, every poem is a living being.
The day my sister was born I felt deeply jealous of her.
She was my own doll. Nobody else could play with her. Whenever guests came to the house to see her, I found a way to distract them by acting strange, so they would not get too close to her.
“Olivia! What are you doing, my child? Why do you want to call everybody's attention like that?”
I did not want people to pay attention to me. I just did not like people to keep on holding my dear Alice. I had never imagined that a baby sister coming out from the hospital could be so pretty: her round little forehead, curly, thin hair, her tiny little hand that kept on holding my fingers to play with them.
“Alice is my sister!” I kept on telling everyone. “And she is going to sleep in my room when she grows older. Both of us are going to play, to take baths, to travel, go to school, to do everything together…”
My mother did not know how to handle me. Several months went by. Alice became prettier and my jealousy grew stronger. This is when Dad come up with an idea:
“I think I know the perfect antidote for Olivia´s jealousy! It is so very simple! She needs to have her own baby, someone else to love…”
“Oh, no, George!” Mom said “It’s definitely too early for us to have another baby!”
“A baby?” asked Dad and then just kept quiet.
I could not sleep, I was so curious about Dad. What was he scheming? Next morning, at breakfast, he told all of us:
“Tomorrow it will be dog´s day… We will take you, girls, to the dog shelter for you to adopt a puppy. And Olivia will take on full responsibility for this new baby, right, my beautiful child?”
Another sleepless night.
I was so happy I could not close my eyes! I had always dreamt about having a dog and Dad had just guessed my strongest wish…
As we arrived at the shelter, Mom came out of the car first, holding Alice. I could not have guessed that a little baby like her would be so happy in this place so crowded with dogs. She would not stop laughing. She clapped her hands. She even made happy baby sounds. So we saw dogs from all sizes, colours, shapes and ages… How could we decide which one to choose?
