She closes her eyes to the sirens and honking cars in Buenos Aires and hear his words in her head.
“This is why we travel, for this exact reason. For moments like this.”, he tells her as they lie next to each other in the small room facing the river Mina in Patagonia.
How many people have you loved?, Sylvia asks me.
She’s sitting at the wooden kitchen table with a view of the crooked willows leaning over the river, when the boy walks through the door. He is tall and skinny and has eyelashes like a girl. He’s a few metres away from her, but she is still unaware of how dark they are or how they naturally bend almost all the way to his eyelids or how they tickle her when he rests his head against her cheek.
“Two”, I say. “Or three, but I’m not sure the third one makes sense.”
They spend days together in the room looking out the small window over the river that makes its way beneath the trees and shrubs in the province of Chubut.
Who was the third?
It’s her last day with him and she puts her head underneath the surface of the river Mina and feels the burning sensation of the cold water against her face. He comes with her to the bus station holding her hand.
Someone I only knew for a few days.
She shuts her eyes to the noise of the traffic on Avenida Córdoba and in her head she hears the sound of her jaw cracking, as she kisses him by the river.
Can I leave my things with you?, I ask Silvia. “I’m going to Patagonia.”
My Maddy Travel 