The Gift

Marc Chagall

Without Mercedes I wouldn’t have made it to write the book (One Hundred Years of Solitude). She took care of the situation. I had bought a car months before. I pawned it and gave her the money, calculating it would last us to live about six months. But I spent a year and a half writing the book. When the money was finished, she didn’t tell me anything. She managed, I don’t know how, to have the butcher cut his meat, the baker the bread and the owner of the apartment wait for us nine months to pay him the rent. She took care of everything without my knowledge: including bringing me five hundred sheets of paper every once in a while…She was the one who, once the book was finished, put the manuscript in the mail to be sent to the Sudamericana Publishing House.

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Thanks

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water thanking it

standing by the windows looking out

in our directions