For many years I grew accustomed to living beyond myself, thinking of things

that were far away, and now those things no longer exist I go on giving more
and more to that cold emptiness, seeking an escape I have never found. I knew
everything. I knew he had married; he had charged a kind soul with telling
me, and I went on receiving his letters, embracing an illusion, so full of sighs
that I even deceived myself. If no one had said anything; if you had not
known; if no one had known but me, his letters and his lies would have
sustained my illusion, just as in the first year of his absence. But everyone
knew, and I was met with pointing fingers that mocked my chastity as a
fiance, and made my spinsters fan appear grotesque. Every year that passed
was like a secret pledge that withered my flesh. One day a friend marries then
another and another, and tomorrow has a grown-up child, and comes to show
me its school report, and they make new homes and new songs, and I am the
same, with the same emotions, the same; I am the same as before, cutting the
same carnations, gazing at the same clouds; and one day Im out walking and
I realise I no longer know anyone; the boys and girls leave me behind because
I bore them, and one says: Oh, thats the old maid; and another, a handsome
boy, with curly hair, comments: No one will have her now. And I hear him
and I cant say a word, only walk on swiftly, with a mouth full of poison, and
an enormous desire to run away, to throw off my shoes, and rest and not move
again, ever, from my corner.