A real bond

It was supposed to be a calm day, but the pressure lasted. When the first waking hours were spent with news anchors and a body count, congress hallway conversations, road conditions and opinion pieces right at 7 in the morning, he felt a little less encouraged to fight for his right to communicate. Maybe it was all for the better, he thought too often. The world inside, he'd bleed all the way to save someone he loved. He'd hide it somewhere. Who needs more national dramas? A friend once said: "if they made a movie out of your life, I'd watch it and probably cry a lot". Sure, it felt good reading that, but it's not something he wanted at all. And who would waste their time with bread and butter, rice and beans every single day? The novellas have good photography and lustful, 12 feet houses with maids and gardeners. But he listened, though he didn't watch any of those. Memories from the previous days came rushing in, everything he'd heard and the few things he'd actually seen. Hours that got dragged. All that isn't comparably stagnant and deserves a different class and category. You start thinking about patterns when you realize they've spent six entire months talking about money laundering. But a right to communicate is only granted with a duty to get your facts somewhere credible. He looked at the man in a gray suit, deep voice and stern appearance, and there he was, sitting down in front of the TV, the smell of the couch less of a problem with the ceiling fan on, a cup of coffee on the side of the shelf, paying attention, unable to move as the closing statement was being delivered, an analysis of how we got to where we are, but few connections to the personal narrative he wanted to chase for the rest of the day.

"...everyone agrees that a republic of moral strength would make equality less a matter of business than a call for action. But action is not encapsulated, it is fragmented. The attempts to exhaust the image of an elected official came not from a single entity or what we call the public sphere, but from the country as a whole, as a united cry for the change we thought we needed. The real change? That wasn't so popular in the networks. Let's be reminded that, for the first time, a strong, brave woman, one with an incomparable history of weaving the threads that led to democratic life and its symbols, one of them being the book on which our lives are based, the constitution of 88, now frustrated in every attempt to bring the common men and women living in our territory a sense of belonging when our justice system comes to play as a device comes to us in a time of need. She wasn't a regular woman, but as the word of mouth spread, we treated her as such. And now, in the face of new challenges which always have and will come to meet us, it's our responsibility, as the events of our breathing democracy unfold and we rise again for another four years, to protect the right you and I have to say what startles and what moves us, what excites us and what shocks us, in the next conversation we have with our families about the rules defining the work we handed out to those we trusted to take care of this ill nation."

The sound of the key opening the lock in the bedroom was heard from a distance. A smart guess would be that they had different priorities. His hair uncombed, sweaty shirt and underwear, a grim look and a soft moan as he rose from the thick spring mattress to use the bathroom. His body made him a tough man who endured a lot of pain from years of hard work, combined with bad habits and lack of exercise. The beard gave out his age: the color seemed to be fading, but his long hair was a sign that maybe he would have done things differently, in case he still had the same shots. They switched to the ads. It was his son watching, who always wanted to look as busy as someone who had three times the concerns and five times the energy. Their eyes met in the living room.

"You're not gonna sleep anymore? It's gonna start all over again?"

"Ey, morning."

"It's not right. Your body needs to regulate, if you don't sleep, it starts like this, it's always the same thing, you don't eat, you don't sleep, I'm your dad but I can't control what you do, I won't tell you what to do, I'm tired of seeing this every time, then you give up on your treatment, then you start getting your crises, you have to grown up, you're not a kid anymore, you have to take care of yourself, how are you gonna get better if you don't take care of yourself?"