I love a woman. I don’t know if she is in Port-au-Prince or elsewhere. Whether she’s alive or lost in a North American city or a small Caribbean town. Attention ! She has a serious beauty. She can light up the world with her gaze.
I’m having a good Sunday today. We are July 16. It is perhaps the most beautiful Sunday in recent months. On Sundays I receive no visitors. It is a day dedicated to loneliness. I stay at home. Only. We all sometimes need to meet ourselves. Staying with myself gives me the strength to fight the great loneliness. The loneliness that the people we love leave on our roads.
But today my Sunday is different because mom is here and then my damn beautiful wife from Haiti is here too. She is there in my dreams this sacred beautiful woman. I think of her with my eyes open and closed. I don’t think she’s alive, that you can touch her any way you want. She is a mystery. A goddess. Each time her image appears before me I dream that I dream of her.
When I think of her my heart becomes a garden of pink flowers. She is alive in me. She’s alive in all the beautiful things I’ve seen. She is alive in this love poem by Pessoa that I just read, in this pink flower that grows at the entrance to the courtyard of Livres Solidaire Haïti in Pétion-Ville. She is alive in this hot sun which crushes the Christians living in Port-au-Prince. She is alive in the voice of Ella Fitzgerald. I don’t know why, when I love a woman I always have the impression that her voice sounds like Ella Fritgerald’s. Maybe I suffer from a dream disease. Love is a dream that never tells the truth.
And when I’m in love, I listen to Ella Fritgerald a lot more. I listen to it at full volume. I listen to Sarah Vaughan too. And since there is no love possible without sorrow, I listen to Chet Baker when the verdict is in. As I write this letter, I don’t know where this woman is. She may be sipping a beer in a bar in Port-au-Prince with someone. Or at least in a city in North America with a book in his hands. Maybe she’s on a beach in a big city in the Caribbean. She may be reading a book by Christian Bobin or Paulo Coelho. The women I love often adore these two writers. It’s chance. Wherever she is I love her. I love her with the city where she resides. There is nothing more resplendent than a city where our sacred beauty is found. That’s why I love many cities around the world. Each time she passes through a city she leaves a bit of sparkle, of beauty. Voila. Too many dreams. Honey I love you with the cities that have left traces in your feet.
A dreamy Sunday
My niece Marc Loudemia Ricot is there too. She’s six years old. She has beautiful eyes and a wide forehead. His forehead is shaped like a piece of the moon. She speaks a lot. She asks lots of questions that I can’t answer. (Unfortunately). She calls me daddy. How touching. Every time she calls me that I feel a heavy responsibility in life. I am a father. A father has no right to leave his nose in a book for a day without paying attention to his daughter. There is a time for family and a time for literature. It was the New York writer Douglas Kennedy who taught me that in his novel “That Moment”. Little Loudemia doesn’t give me time to read. She plays. She screams out loud. She disturbs my books too. She finds them too sad perhaps. “Dad, what’s in the books?” asks Loudemia. This is a question that leaves me speechless. I would say perhaps that there are silences in books, infinite worlds, revelations, endless dreams. There are also joys in books. »
Today my mom is pretty quiet. She is cooking. She cleans the dusty books. Sometimes she laughs heartily when I tell an anecdote about my private life. My mother is my secret box. I hide nothing from her. Except for missed trysts. I don’t know a girl who has the prettiest smile than my mother. And every time she laughs all the beauty of the rivers and our springs shines on her face. What I especially like is her color, her hair. And then she has beautiful teeth with purple gums. My God ! She keeps in her the radiance of her youth. I feel comforted every time she laughs. I find a little life at home. It erases all the loneliness that has been hidden in the walls. My mother, when she is there it is joy. Even after her departure she will leave joys. She is sick. I pray for her. She stays the course. We pray to God. In our family, we don’t have a habit of saying I love you between us. We show our love with small gestures. Fraternal and furtive glances. We show our love by mixing our laughter. You know ? A gesture of love is more grandiose than a word of love. We love each other in silence.
I still think about that damn beautiful woman from Haiti. She is beautiful like the first love poems I wrote in my childhood. It is a truth that I must not reveal to the world. I love her in silence. I write lots of love letters for her. I hide them in my books that are on the shelves of my library. I hesitate to send these love letters. History of always dreaming. I don’t want to see her in reality. She is too beautiful to be seen near me.