Autor:    Enrique Arroyo Villegas

REQUIEM FOR THE ISLANDS

Sitting in a rocking chair, among the greens and blues of Costa Rica, he cries, cries simple tears, salty as the sea of ​​seven colors that he lived.

He knows what a hurricane is, he had to live the tail of one in San Andrés; he was with Cristóbal Posada, at his house.

The wind blew away the beach, and the doors creaked as if all the sea monsters, those from the old drawings, had congregated there.

He thinks of his friends, the ones from the domino games near Mama Lu, with their plasterboard houses built with the scraps of packaging that the Lebanese made them pay for.

He thinks of Chita, his friend, with a few friends and no home.

—Do you want a coffee? —asks his life companion.

—Thank you.

“If only the sea had welcomed its colorful painted houses, like biblical rafts”, he thinks.

—It hurts, they are like permanent castaways, without Africa, without the Caribbean.

—It hurts —she says, taking his hand.

—Food will arrive from the continent to make arepas for the pañas.

The first drops fall from a downpour that is felt to come.

—I remember those coconut trees, and their coconuts, and the rondón and the rum.

They open a bottle of rum.

—Cheers to the islands! —she makes a toast.

—Cheers!

It rains and it rains.

—The crabs, my friends of the night, will not come out of their burrows for several days, and the beaches will have been filled with the remains of ancient shipwrecks, with lead coffins of pirates, with lost toys.

They have another drink.

—There will be no reports of deaths, no injuries, they have never counted —he says in a broken voice—. May their Baptist and Anglican prayers be heard.

—So be it.

—It erased everything… But nothing will be able to erase their songs, their dreams, their islands.

He closes his eyes. He feels the joy of the islanders, their music, their aromas, their flavors, San Andrés, Providencia, Santa Catalina.