María Rosa Lojo

Transparency

Every day at dusk the woman sits down within the patio of her house. Anyone accompanying her would see how her body becomes transparent in time with the shade. First there appears a map lit up with veins and viscera, then, farther down, a village of hollow bones through which the wind races like a throb of music.

The woman smiles and lifts up an arm in the incipient night. A few minutes more and the splendor of bone illuminated by distant songs willfade out and skin conceal the blood’s color.

When everything ends, she keeps the chair under the eaves and returns to the kitchen, taking with her the secret of the world’s transparency.

Translated by Brett Alan Sanders.