I Will Never Return to the Island

Η πόλις θα σε ακολουθεί.

I will never return to the island. Regardless of ruler: Ariel, Caliban, Prospero, Miranda – I hope it's Miranda. Regardless of system. My needs go beyond governors and systems of government. I am weak, infirmed, old. Fragile, vulnerable. I need comforts. First-world comforts. American comforts. Even if the island is my home. Even if it's the only place where I can breathe. Where I can walk. Where I can feel my body. My body is beyond such niceties.

My sons, all three of them, want to go. They want to go with me. The unspoken thought is: the old man is sick, we need to go with him before he dies. Not that I intend to die anytime soon. But I'm not getting better anytime soon either. I hate to disappoint them, but it's not my mortal life, it's my shelf life that has expired.

(My daughter is smarter, naturally. She already went on her own.)

I will never see the city again, walk the cobbled streets I first walked, drive the Malecón in winter with the big waves crashing or in summer with the couples locked in embraces. Take el Paseo del Prado toward Centro Habana or go further and enter La Habana Vieja and watch it open to La Plaza de la Catedral, stare up at the Palacio del Marqués de Aguas Claras, the mulatto marquis in one of whose palace rooms my grandmother and her sons lived 200 years later, when the second floor had been turned into inexpensive apartments, just one big room but 30-foot ceilings and balconies that looked out into the plaza. I will content myself with a Facebook video of el Callejón del Chorro, where duels were once fought, that a friend who goes to Havana often posted and ends with a dog taking a piss.

I will content myself. Seeing and reading what others publish or post or make into movies. I will discontent myself. I will grow bitter. Amargo. A step before the final one. No white horse and gun for me, I barely know how to ride, I don't know how to fire a gun, I'm too cowardly to turn one toward me, and there's no one looking to shoot me. The city will haunt me. The island will sing to me from afar. Far. Farther. Farthest.

Que te busquen en mi frente.