{"id":5252,"date":"2024-11-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-18T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/?p=5252"},"modified":"2024-11-17T15:48:59","modified_gmt":"2024-11-17T23:48:59","slug":"mulher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2024\/mulher\/","title":{"rendered":"mulher"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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mulher<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n By<\/span> Jonathan Park<\/strong>\n \n November 18, 2024<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The color of her dress changes every time I think about her. Green. Orange?\u00a0 She\u2019s strutting, one foot placed in front of the other, silent commanding clacks of heels on age-old brick, this plaza in Lisbon her fucking runway. She has an inscrutable expression: eyes hinting at a life long lived, skin worn down by the sun and wind. The muscles around her eyelids are relaxed. She looks ahead, and only straight ahead, as she moves. Maybe the dress had flowers\u2014blue flowers. Green? Joined at her hip is her husband. I don\u2019t remember what he looks like. Red plaid button-up tucked under brown cargo pants, belt. That could be entirely made up. He glances\u2014up, the slightest bit\u2014at her from time to time, walks in a restrained scurry to match her catwalk. Their mouths are moving, whispering insignificant things to each other as lovers do. Maybe just to hear the sound of the other\u2019s voice. As people pass this small shop window, where I stand cowering, their conversations dare to reveal themselves to me\u2014phone calls with coworkers, children screaming, street vendors chirping, ringing laughs\u2014before they crawl back into the general human noise. But these lovers stay in their own world, inaudible to reality and reality irrelevant to them\u2014glass mountains she carries around her and hers. The road out of the plaza veers sharply downward. A little horizon, under which the woman\u2019s head slowly, slowly drowns.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I remember wanting her story. If I were more brashly arrogant, or perhaps if I were quick enough on my feet to have devised an excuse, I could have approached her and asked her so many questions: <\/span>Who are you? How did you get here? How do I live as you live?<\/span><\/i> But no such thing happened. She, the unknowable, and I, the tourist, were strung to our separate ways, meeting only at that trivial moment. Absent a story, I left with a conviction: I must come back.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In my dreams, the plaza stretches to infinity. From a poet\u2019s bronze statue sat atop towering limestone\u2014the singularity\u2014this path of glimmering patterned stone bursts forth: Past \u00c0 Brasileira, past Livraria Bertrand, it curves not down but up, stabbing the misted heavens with a great force. Flanked on both ends by marble buildings, nondescript, the woman is by herself. Her dress is green. She looks back at me. A cigarette wisps away between her fingers. Her eyebrows are tense\u2014the rest of her face unchanged.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cWhat are you waiting for?\u201d she asks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I can\u2019t, I want to say. I have a whole life behind me, a whole life ahead of me. Here.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 But my lips don’t move.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cLook behind you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Everything is burning. The poet’s statue is melting. Bombs rain from the sky. Screams and gunshots ring over the crackling of fire. Everyone I have ever loved is under the rubble.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 She takes a long drag of the cigarette.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cWhat are you waiting for?\u201d she asks again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I want to refuse. I want to believe the rubble is my home. But my lips don\u2019t move. And she only stares at me, letting out smoke in a narrow breath. Then she flicks the cigarette onto the ground and stomps it. She holds out her hand. Her eyebrows relax again. The sun is so bright.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cWhat are you waiting for?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 And I wake up in a burning bed. And I am reaching for her hand. And I am reaching for her hand. And I am reaching for her hand. And I am reaching for her hand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The next morning, after I first saw her, there was no trace of the woman. But I saw the woman\u2019s face everywhere I went. The first time I noticed, there was a crowd cheering on three men taking turns breakdancing. I thought I recognized them. I stopped in my tracks, transfixed suddenly. No, their faces were just as they were; but whenever they stood up laughing after their turn they briefly glimmered, and I could swear they had the woman\u2019s face then, and in those flashes I would remember the dream, and my heart would reach for the sun.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I walked, then I ran, up and down the cobbled streets, scanning faces. A mother selling trinkets. A violinist playing, quite slowly and out of tune. A frazzled man with husks for eyes, sitting on the curb, chain-smoking away. They all had the woman\u2019s face. Or maybe I just wanted them to have the woman\u2019s face. Maybe none of it was real. Maybe I wanted it to be real. My feet kept moving.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 At some point I came back to the same place I started. It was cold. European summer heat had been unrelenting, but today it decided to let up. There was an open table at \u00c0 Brasileira. I took my seat and ordered an espresso. A tiny cup came clanging, with sugar on the side\u2014just how they liked it here. I took a sip. Bittersweet, dark. I looked up at the poet. I knew now what it meant to feel a longing for nothing but too long, a loneliness in the midst of people, a never-feeling-pleased when pleased. I gave the poet a scowl, as if to tell him as much. He said nothing back. He had the woman\u2019s face, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 On my last day, I was rushing to the airport, having slept through my alarm, now a hair away from missing my flight. I barged through the entrance, a frenzy of backpack and suitcase. Taking a quick breath at the escalator as it pulled me up, I looked back at the departures floor slowly growing smaller behind me. I noticed a woman that was about to leave. She had a green dress. I think. There was a man next to her. They were laughing about something. Then she looked up at me. I looked back. And we stayed like that for a few seconds. I was sure she had some kind of twinkle in her eye, as if to say something that I had already heard before. Then she disappeared again. The escalator was still going.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Jonathan Park<\/strong> is a senior majoring in applied and computational mathematics, with a minor in cybersecurity. He was born and raised in the Bay Area. Most days he reads The New Yorker<\/em>. Sometimes he takes photos and posts them to his Instagram. You can follow Jonathan on Instagram here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-5252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2024","tag-prose"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nmulher<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2024\/mulher\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"mulher - Palaver Arts Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2024\/mulher\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Palaver Arts Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/palaver.arts.magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-11-18T08:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/175\/2023\/06\/palaver-logo.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"710\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"198\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akcannon\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2024\/mulher\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2024\/mulher\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"akcannon\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/palaver\/#\/schema\/person\/8ac801b3c8176b6860207b43ecbe9e78\"},\"headline\":\"mulher\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-11-18T08:00:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2024\/mulher\/\"},\"wordCount\":1,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/palaver\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Prose\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Issue 16: Fall 2024\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2024\/mulher\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/palaver\/fall-2024\/mulher\/\",\"name\":\"mulher - 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