MY AUNT believed that the Earth was a witness that never forgets, constantly telling and retelling stories, always at a state of reminiscing. From its spherical shape, its rotation, revolution, and the never-ending cycle of life and death on its surface, above it and underneath—looping was the nature of the world, she concluded.
It was afternoon. We were in my mother’s garden. She dug a small hole around the corner of the area. Meanwhile, I quietly stood behind her as I held onto a small plain cardboard box containing a single lifeless kitten. One of the neighborhood stray cats had just given birth in our garage, and one of her kittens did not make it.
Done digging, my aunt took the box from me and delicately laid the lifeless kitten down the hole. She enshrouded the kitten’s remains with soil and placed stones around the mini mountain that formed after. She quietly occupied the space beside me and put her arm around my shoulder.
“The language Earth speaks is easy to translate. The mommy cat won’t forget, and I think that’s the only thing the baby cat would want.”
The Earth was a witness that never forgets, constantly telling and retelling stories, always at a state of reminiscing. It spoke many languages: whisper of the wind, chirping of the birds, and the blossoming of flowers. All the beautiful things that grew on Earth, their existence, was a way of saying that once, something as beautiful existed within its sphere. F MARIA ANTOINETTE A. MALICSE
