Klethon Gomes dos Santos Red Root

Red Root

Klethon Gomes dos Santos

There are roots everywhere, and I am rooted. They are red roots in the middle of the red, soft earth. I hear voices, sounds—my world shudders. Someone is crying, and then I cry too. My gory world, what could it be? There are no clouds, but what are clouds?

There are so many questions, but there is no time. I’m blossoming in my red world, and I only know the sweet, sharp voice of chance. Why am I here? Why am I rooted? There is no answer, yet little by little, I cease to be liquid without counting the infinity of time. I transmute myself and acknowledge my existence as I feel that something will happen.

I look around: my world gets smaller. I cry. I am confused; I kick the roots. I provoke pain, and I feel it. My world then contracts itself, and I hear a scream. Where does it come from?

I shrink myself. I am red and lonely. My world keeps diminishing, and I don’t know what to do. I am scared of what might happen if my world reduces too much to the point I can’t fit into it anymore, so I push against the walls and my sky. Will I stop fitting into my world? I don’t know, but I am overpowered by something deep inside me that moves me to fight for myself.

I hear a sharp cry. What happened? Is there another me? No, It’s her. She’s sad, lost, and tired. I feel her, and I hear her because we are. She loves me more than anything else. She told me so, joyfully, while also saying she would protect me. She told me many stories about a world that doesn’t look like mine. I don’t know what her words mean. I can only trust her.

As the infinity of time grows, I realize: my world is not getting smaller; I am getting bigger. My existence gets huge and selfish. I need more space, so I scream in fear. I do not want to die. I’m blooming—I need to be!

I feel words forming on my growing lips while I lift myself immensely, immense in questions, thoughts, and desires. I recognize a sound that echoes from within me: “tum, tum, tum ...” I feel my development in progress: hands, legs, and eyes, getting more and more firm and curious. I feel so many things all at once I can’t even distinguish them. I don’t know what I’m turning into, but I’m curious to find out.

I am now as vast as my world. Moved by a sort of force more potent than anything else, I look around and realize that something bigger than me and my land is screaming for me. I want to go, but I don’t know where. I feel compelled to cross the frontiers of what I can see, although I am afraid and confused as never before. The phobia of being alive suffocates me, but I want to solve the mystery of who I am. So, I finally decide to accept my universal living destiny: set myself free from my Homeland.

I tear the roots away from the land that formed me. I hurt my world, and she screams in pain. As I untangle myself from the roots that nurtured me, I see the light for the first time. I beg for help. She shouts again. Different voices from abroad shout at her. She cries in profound pain, but my action is unstoppable. As tears run through my face, I touch the light as if everything I saw and felt took me up to that moment. I cross the uterus, my Homeland, to meet the unknown. I leave my roots bathed in blood and tears. I depart from the land that formed me, a mysterious red world, to find an entire range of lightful possibilities.

As I abandon my small world, I take dreams and the essence of the one that begat me with me. Even amidst so much distress, she smiles with

hazy eyes upon seeing me for the first time. Her eyes hold secrets and her dark skin, the powerfulness of an entire universe. She and I carry the secret of transformation. We are the mother earth; we are the evolution. We are blood, we are tears, we are the overlap of contrasting feelings, and we are our most intriguing mysteries; we are lives, and we only have eyes for each other.

As I leave the womb changing everything, lights and voices echo. I am trembling as never before. When the essential cord that unites us is cut, the dream-filled life I have taken from my creator is now definitely mine.

I feel guilty. By realizing what she has done for me and the pain I provoked, I blame myself for coming to the world, for stealing her essence. My existence kills part of her, but there is no turning back; I am the seed of her future, of a millennial “us,” and nothing is more substantial than such a truth. When I finally breathe fresh air for the first time, the breath of revelation reaches me, and now I know what love and protection mean, so I cry out my unintelligible truth to the entire world: “Forgive me, mother!”

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Quim Paredes

Acrylic on wood, clear tar gel, pumice gel, and faux rust