“Madame, you will not be able to board the flight, your COVID test is in German,” the Swiss airline employee told my daughter at the gate in Zurich airport, as she prepared to fly home to London. “Excuse me? It says “Negativ,” just add the “e” and you’ll turn it into English.” “No, Madame, we’re…
Author: Ximena Escobar de Nogales
Colombian, Swiss, and Spanish, mother of three adult children, volunteer tutor in prison. Impact advisor, co-founder El Boga Foundation, apprentice storyteller, dog walker.
Name it
Six men and one woman sit around a large mahogany table at the Colombian Embassy in Brussels. At the head of the table, the Ambassador, a man in his early thirties, smoking and smiling with the other men. The woman looks down at her large belly, she will soon deliver a child. The men’s laughter…
Violeta
Ya nadie mas se sentará en el Eames lounge chair A todos les quedará grande Solo ella, con su mirada ancestral, podía presidir desde allí, observando impávida el ir y venir de vidas agitadas Podría uno confundir su actitud con soberbia Pero no, era la sabiduría de quien está de vuelta de todo y calla…
The Visionary
He said there’d be a bar
He saw the glittering glasses, the single malt whiskey bottles
He probably heard the guests’ laughter
We looked around the room
Las manos transgresoras de mi médico
Una mujer sabia no desea ser enemiga de nadie; una mujer sabia se niega a ser víctima de alguien.
-Maya Angelou
The clay pot
Letter to my father, Rodrigo Escobar Navia Today, the 6th of November in 2020, you would have turned 86. It is not by chance that I find myself here, in this library, reading Borges. How you loved Borges! So much so that I scattered your ashes on the grave of the celebrated argentine, in Geneva’s…
Una vasija de barro
Hoy, 6 de noviembre de 2020, cumplirías 86 años. No es fortuito que me encuentre aquí en esta biblioteca leyendo a Borges. Cómo te gustaba Borges! Tanto que esparcí tus cenizas sobre la tumba del célebre argentino en el cimetière des rois en Ginebra.
Instrucciones para un recién nacido
Has llegado de lejos
pequeña criatura entrañable
hay fresas y colibríes
Este es un lugar hermoso
Mo’ther (mudh-), n. A female parent.
My mother was neither cradle nor lap
She was a sword, an arrow, an argument
Beautiful, sharp, and feline
Neither refuge nor anchor, my mother was a battle
Madre, f. Mujer que ha concebido o ha parido uno o más hijos.
Mi madre no era un arrullo ni un regazo
Era un sable, una saeta, un argumento
Bella, aguda, felina
Preferiría ser árbol
Observo impotente el dolor, la violencia, la muerte
Y me digo que preferiría ser árbol
A step at a time
We load the car with your grief and mine
Two suitcases and the guitar
Grief, you treasonable thing
A brie aux truffes set the disturbance in motion
A home called Trudi
Money, power, titles, aesthetics, social class, or eloquence, never impressed her
Dogs live too short a life
A dogbituary
