Manuel is dead. There wasn’t much Eve could do once she got to his place to talk. "Our time is over," Manuel had said as soon as he opened the door when Eve arrived and sat by his side. She would never again see the eyes she fell in love with. Those were the first things Manuel lost. They slipped out of his sockets—fresh and withered. Eve caught them with her trembling wrists. "I feared it," she said before leaving him behind, unable to shake the image of Manuel’s eyes dripping onto the carpet, without knowing where or how she took the train back home. Eve knew this kind of ending needed to occur privately, or the body would be exposed instantly, but she couldn’t handle it once she experienced it for the first time. She replayed the journey in her mind the next day, understanding nothing. She remembered only one thing: she, too, would die soon. Her hands were starting to fray. She knew she had to hurry—she took paper, and with her fountain pen, wrote at the bottom of
her desk:
Eve and Manuel regretfully invite you to the farewell of uncaptured memories, with
bodies present.
Tuesday, September 28, 6 p.m., Aragon Park
Please bring an offering.
Eve signed the invitation with the hand that would soon cease to exist and be replaced by a new and weak version of it. She mailed it through special post, which would ensure its delivery by the end of the day. Barely able to walk, she understood she had to shed herself before she lost her hands completely. In an act of courage, she tore away Eve the Beloved by slowly undressing herself from the armor that encased her body. The act elicited a scream that sent the letters flying toward their respective recipients—only those whose lives had briefly intersected with Eve and Manuel’s love story, and no others, would be present at the ceremony. Looking at her Beloved body, all she could think about was how heavy it felt, and how weak she had become. She laid the unraveling body of Eve the Beloved inside the coffin she never thought she would need.
Eve had heard from others who had gone through the same. She had seen her mom’s bottle tears, displayed like perfumes on a shelf in her bedroom, each one with the name of their lovers’ memories.But now, realizing that the duty of crying over the memories would soon begin, she felt hopeless. Even though those nadir tears were a symbol of the deepest connection between human beings, crying them out was nowhere near as beautiful as it sounded. The next day, their friends and family arrived in groups of three, in small black cars. They stepped out slowly, holding back the gusts of the end of spring. Each one carried their offering in hand. Once in Aragon’s park, right next to the oldest three, all stood in silence, forming a circle around the bodies of Manuel and Eve the Beloved, heads bowed, trying to hold still amidst the turbulent imbalance in Eve and Manuel's throats. Without a word, Eve dropped to the floor the eyes that had fallen from Manuel the day before. Manuel stared at her, with the new cold, crystalline eyes that had never seen her before.
"You used to look at me," Manuel said, with fire in his chest, "and I fell in love with the way your flames moved. You looked at me so beautifully when the sun fell on my face, while we held hands lying on the grass." Eve the Beloved's hair was the first to give in after Manuel finished speaking to everyone. One by one, the strands left Eve's scalp with the same delicacy they had grown. Now they said goodbye, clouding the eyes of the onlookers with the same memory that had bloomed in them. Eve and Manuel's loved ones felt in their own eyes the memory of her hair: every fiber held the wind, the heat, the cold, and the damp earth where they had spent hours sleeping, embracing the grass. They felt Manuel's loving fingers cradle their temples, tracing behind the ear, numb with warmth and drowsiness over their eyelids. They remembered only the most beautiful moments of their childhoods, just as Eve the Beloved, did lying on Manuel’s chest.
For the last time, Eve felt Manuel’s fingers shower her with love. She watched her hair vanish like mist. The first tears fell. She took the bottle from her pocket and saved her nadir tears for the first time.
Eve the Beloved’s, eyes began to slip from their sockets, forcing everyone to close their own eyes and relive, for an instant, the intense love Eve had felt looking into Manuel’s dark eyes, right before their first kiss. They also saw the first flowers, Manuel’s smile in the subway station, the shirts from their first dates, and the photos Manuel had captured with his light machine. Manuel in the cinema's shadows, kisses in the dark, September mornings, with skies above them as flocks of parakeets flew by in Aragon’s Park.
When enough had passed, everyone heard two marbles drop silently onto the grass. The spectators’ eyelids were released, and after a few blinks, they watched the legs of both bodies detach from their owners. Taking the first step, there wasn’t much time. Their limbs began to imitate the slow movements of their feet. They experienced the pain of the long walks home they had taken together in their own soles. They felt beneath them the grass, the warmth of the pavement, the cracked asphalt of the city’s poorest, gloomiest streets, the smooth marble of museums, the cold tiles of classrooms, and the almost textureless thickness of public transport, the waiting rooms before reuniting after long stretches at the airport, the carpeted aisles of the airplane, the cinema.
Their limbs evaporated into the ground, and as the memories burned, a strange ache loaded with nostalgia settled in their chests. But there were some memories that no one could feel again but them: secret memories that only their bodies, about to die, could hold, like the ones Eve the Beloved’s breasts began to wither, revealing Manuel’s lips encircling her craters, his hands writing songs across her torso, her navel, her tongue meeting his.
Her skin peeled away, unveiling before all a translucent veil, almost invisible, over
their eyes; causing each one to feel in their own skin the tumult of gentle, enamored caresses that once crossed between their bodies through linen or cotton. Everything faded like copal smoke. Only the heart and hands remained in the coffins. The wise ones said that when the heart and hands were all that was left, there was still much to give between the lovers, but nothing they could do to keep it.
Eve rushed to meet herself and cried over her own eyes. She gathered her tears in the bottle, looked at her heart beating fast, then slowly, and without anyone noticing, easily took one of its veins—the very one that would have entwined with Manuel’s heart if he had not chosen to kill them.
The guests dropped their offerings in the center, photos of Manuel and Eve at gatherings with friends, along with artifacts that were tied to their memories together. Still, some of them couldn’t bear the thought of Manuel and Eve disappearing, so they offered both of them more empty bottles to cry over their memories, allowing their shared moments to last a bit longer even after their deaths. Once the offerings were placed next to the bodies laughter, and reunions filled the room with a glowing collage of family outings and memories. They all felt the exhaustion from prolonged laughter in their ribs, the taste of shared meals lingering on their tongues. Once their senses faded, the guests carried the boxes containing Eve the Beloved’s, and Manuel’s remains. They buried them in the immense garden that had once witnessed their tears of joy. Eve the Beloved, and Manuel's remains would also fade away. As soon as the nadir their tears filled the empty bottles, the memories contained within would not be touched. "My condolences," Eve heard more than a dozen people say, followed by a hug that made her take out the bottle again to collect her tears. When everyone had laid flowers over Eve the Beloved’s, and Manuel’s hidden remains, Eve took a deep breath and squeezed Manuel’s new hand—he seemed not to need his bottle at all.
Eve left the garden, leaning on her mother’s arm. Everyone else had gone; in such cases, she had heard, only the closest person to the grieving individual could keep visiting to ensure that the adjustment to the new body was functioning as it should. Manuel, on the other hand, had no one with him and rejected any kind of support
during the transition.
I don’t feel my body,” Eve told her mother. “One day you will again, my girl,” her mother replied, collecting some tears from her cheeks. “We’ve all been there.” Once Eve filled the bottle with her tears, she would be closer to fully living in her new
body.
Sofía Méndez Ramírez is a third-year MFA student in Playwriting at Western Michigan University. Méndez received her Bachelor of Communication and Journalism from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Has collaborated as a guest speaker in two main book fairs in Mexico City: FILIJ and FIL Minería. Sofía received an Honorable Mention at The Gwen Frostic Award in Playwriting for her play “That Song of Us” (2023) She started to teach as a teacher assistant at Western in 2022.
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