Written by Sérgio Raimundo

"And if the sky fell on me it would at least be a wreck," my grandfather would croak as he dug a hole with his fingernail to bury his shirt button. I can't get out of my head my grandfather swallowing little pill medallions and shooting coughing bursts just like he did in the woods of Homoíne when he was hunting wild pigs. Speaking of Homoíne, it was at the Homoíne Massacre where my grandfather saw his parents shot with machetes. I'll say no more about Homoine...

My grandfather sitting in a wheelchair, with a scattered bundle of words stretched out in his crooked mouth, turned to the beyond by a gust of paralysis, his half-moon eyes as if announcing the end of his own night. I still have suspended in my memory the image of him shooting with a cane an army of flies that sucked kiloliters of blood from his legs run over by old age.

And if the sky fell on me, I would at least be a wreck

"And if the sky fell on me, I would at least be a wreck," my grandfather used to say when he was evacuated by my uncles to the nursing home in Lhanguene where he rotted without the slightest opportunity to be a wreck. Now I want to wake him up from the tomb of memory, fix his tie, reprogram his life calendar, polish his age-ridden legs, take him by the hand, and shout in his ear: "Heaven took pity on you, Grandpa, and let your children fall on you.

My grandfather suspended in the halls of the home, his feet always dangling to be changed into diapers, his memory crashing endlessly into the void and no more wetting and his tongue firm to bite the roof of his mouth and say, ". I was a kid, but then I saw my grandfather's wheelchair hanging on the wall and heard my uncles' voices suspended inside the house dividing into rooms and dividing everything; "and don't the camels in the bank make it hard for us?" my father would say with his voice wrapped in the funnel of his hand so that the echo wouldn't overflow all over the house.

I was a kid, but then I saw my grandfather's wheelchair hanging on the wall.

"And if the sky fell on me I would at least be a wreck," but the sky took pity on you, Grandpa, it was liquid in your lungs that tore you apart and you didn't have time to be a wreck, you ended up as an echo dragged by the wind in the home. And my uncles dragged away everything that was my grandfather's. My uncles only opened the door of the home to give a one-eyed gentleman with eucalyptus hair in his nostril tunnels a suit from the home and tell him, "do everything with Paradise Light Funeral Home and then send us the expenses.

My grandfather's house was shattered into slices, my uncles' monkeys disputed the branches of the property, and I saw grandfather suspended in his wheelchair to the wall and vociferating, "...would at least be a wreck." Frankly, Grandpa, what wreck do you expect to be in the midst of those monkeys, you who now foam worms in some grave flooded with grass?