This is the beginning of a piece I wrote three years ago as I was leaving my life in Peru. It's abstract, I went back to it many times in order to make sense of it and structure it in a way so that it would make sense to others reading it. It reflects the strong emotions I experienced while looking towards an unknowable future and unwillingly leaving behind a dreamlike existence, the kind I had always imagined.

They fell from the sky, first in small drops like dew that appears on tender blades of grass overnight, then expanding to become fat raindrops that descended from the sky like those of the spring rainstorms welcomed by blooming daffodils and fuchsias. Upon hitting the ground, the site of impact reverberated in waves, like the surface of a calm glacial lake whose silence is broken by ice crystals shattering the mirror-like water. Even as the drops fell, there was an infinite silence, now being interrupted by the crashing upon the invisibly existent ground. Slowly the drops formed streams and ponds until gradually they inundated the surrounding mossy earth creating impressive rivers, formidable even to the experienced sailor of the Amazon, and massive oceans that Columbus’ crew would have feared sailing upon.

In the air hung the stench of rotting organic matter, the sulfurous odor of putrefied eggs mixed with the humidity of limp lettuce leaves from which emanated a cloud of flies buzzing around the feast set before their chattering incisors. A door creaked somewhere in the hollowness of the silence but only the sound of vulture cries could be heard. It was feasting time. The inundation had caused the spoilage of the food stocked away for preparing vegetable soups: potato in cream of mushroom, salad of lettuce and tomato, to last through the week but lamentably, there was no use of it now except for the feeding of the ruminating animals or pestilent flies.

           High above circled a pair of vultures intently locked on its eminent dinner. What attracted their appetitive curiosity was nothing less than a fresh human-sized cadaver, floating lightly upon a worm-eaten raft that straddled obstinately to an island of half-submerged fragments of wooden barrels, sails, iron-corrugated beds and kitchen parts. The figure lying in the tangled mess was eerily familiar; although barely decipherable the face was that of a youthful man, the cheeks once ruddy were colorless, the only evidence of his deep-set eyes were the large eyelids that rested quietly. On his lean but strong body were the tatters of shirtsleeves, once white but now colored cream by the floating journey and strangely enough his dungarees were completely intact, other than the salt from the sea that had dried and became encrusted upon them.