The Widow’s Revenge
© Katherinne Bardales

I ran away to the desert, a black shawl,
to mend my broken heart
with fuschia papelillo petals,
green flesh of cactus
and sharp fox teeth.

Many miles I walked, barefoot,
cutting open my soles with broken beer bottles
and burnt wood left from talking circles
long ago.

Layer by layer of skin I peeled off,
leaving trails of brown and pink in the sand.
With my tanned skeleton I danced in the wind
and made love to the sand dunes.

Then sun reached out with its upturned fingernails
and made my hair catch on fire.
My head, a golden flame now, turned my memory to dust.

I became speckles of copper and meteor
and the fishermen, who crossed the desert each day
to find virgin shores filled with silver eyes
sprinkled me on their fish like spice.

I made them see oases.
I made them jump in sandpits, mad with love.

Last week my friends from Chicago were visiting, and they pointed out to me that my downstairs neighbors have a little plate on the door with their names on it. In addition to their names there is a very prominent picture of a native American, an Indian. Of course I had seen the sign, but I never really thought about it. The family living in the apartment could not be less related to any native American.

The initial discovery of the name sign resulted in a good laugh, but now, every time I pass the totally incorrect sign with the Native American I start to laugh.

It is just too funny that a typical Dutch lower class family, a husband, a wife, three children and three dogs somehow for some strange reason placed a sing with their names and an Indian on their door. I suspect they selected the Indian because it is a very colorful image, but it still remains such a funny mystery. I think I’ll just go and have another look. :-p

Friday was a working day for me, but we had agreed to meet in Amsterdam in the afternoon. After my work I went to find the girls. Not easy, because my knowledge of Amsterdam is very limited, and it was difficult for the girls to give me clear directions. Eventually I did manage to find them and of course when I found them they were just visiting a coffeeshop :-p. What a surprise!

Thanks to Walmart for burning all those pictures to CD, irfanview for resizing everything for the web and textpad for helping me make all the HTML pages.

See you all in September!

Today I’ll just hang around town and maybe visit a submarine that’s docked at the harbor. For the rest of the week I don’t have any plans yet but I figure I’ll take it easy and get some rest. (=yawn smiley)

Today I also returned by car to the rental agency. I notices that during my trip I accumulated quite a large amount of souvenirs.