Telephone

Telephone

Everyone complains that I never answer the telephone, if they only knew! But of course, they don’t know, they completely ignore the dimensions of my house, the distance that I have to travel, the dangers that I have to avoid to manage picking up the phone before the call finishes.

First of all, due to the island climate, the tiles of the long corridor are always damp, more than once I have slipped on them and been left with a bruised body for weeks. Then there is the issue of the blinding light that pierces through the towering windows leaving me totally blind while I run desperately to catch it in time for the call, and to top it all off there are those strange dogs, always nervous, excited, with a kind of gleam in their eyes from another world. Crossing promptly before I scream, plaintively scream, the whole corridor is then an echo multiplied by cold shadows enveloping me like spider webs, so that I don’t make it, that I never make it. But people ignore all of this and call and call and the more they call the more my life is in danger....

[to be continued]

--Julia Otxoa. Translated by Anna Tatarko.