ˢⁱᵇᵒⁿᵉʸ

We entered the room at approximately 0300. A quiet apartment complex, tightly packed cubicles with stark walls and recently refurbished carpets on 3rd street and Roosevelt;

a call had come in from the next door neighbor due to the loudly playing chorus:


‘Siboney….’,

The caller stated she had only seen this neighbor in passing. She was a kind, pretty woman of about thirty; she had recently moved in about two months ago. The loud music was obnoxious the

caller stated, although this was abnormal behavior for this new neighbor. We stood in the open air hallway outside the unit, peripherally glancing at the sloppily painted grey door with

its tired golden knob. An ominous, yet crisp ambiance swelled my perceptions. These kinds of calls typically brought trouble in the form of domestic dispute. Attitudes, violence, meaningless

attempts to deter social deterioration on that most intimate level between man and woman. On average, I would have more ease in this set up of the elderly neighbor reporting loud noise in a

young person’s apartment – yet something in that crooning voice beckoned me like a sad angel towards it, like it wanted to tell me a secret I knew already, deep in my gut.

My partner knocked on the door several times and called for the Miss, but no voice returned to us. Eventually we broke the door in as that music,

‘Yo te quiero, yo me muiero por tu amor…’

The studio apartment was dimmed, lit up by the kitchen light and a small lamp stand. Minimal furniture of a couch, covered in throw pillows and blankets, and a book case filled to the brim

sat in the living room. A smell of incense and a tomato dish enriched the air of the comfortable, feminine room. The sound of that beautiful voice became louder as we slowly walked into the space,

‘Siboney, en tu boca la miel puso su dulzor…’

We called for the lady whose apartment we entered. I felt like an intruder upon a good citizen’s home. My partner became impatient after we called for her once or twice; I can’t blame

him for that, but I was becoming increasingly unnerved recollecting similar stories such as this. Her shoes sat in my view in the hall leading to the master bedroom. A dainty pair of black leather flats,

neatly placed adjacent to the door.

‘Ven aqui que te quiero, y que todo tesoro eres tú para mi…’

We opened the master bedroom door, inundated by a flood of gorgeous warm light. A den of light strings exuding an uncanny amber glow, a dozen or so Catholic candles lit up in random places,

enhancing the true red of the heavy comforter atop the Queen size bed. A window was open, letting in the night’s darkness and the winter breeze – it fluttered the pages of a large bound journal

splayed open with pencil writing. A thick black robe splayed out on the bed, as if this woman had just decided to take a late night shower after a lovely evening on the town.

‘Sibony, al arrullo de la palma pienso en ti…’
My partner took towards the bathroom door repeating our lady’s name, where the music continued to lilt from, loudly enough to require us to raise our voices now. The bathroom light was off,

with only candles lighting up the bath tub. I could feel my hairs stand up all over my body as I accepted the intuition I had staring at that strange gray door.

‘Siboney de mi suenos, si no oyes la queja de mi voz, Siboney, si no vienes me morire de amor…’

The candles’ glow draped delicate yellows and blues across the tub’s waters. A pale skin glistened in shadows and water, a chiaroscuro of acrid grays forming a ghostly body. The face was

obscured by the darkness of the room. My partner hesitated in his voice, still in preparation for the harrowing light to come.

‘Siboney de mi sueńos, te espero con ansia en mi caney…Siboney, si no vienes me moríre de amor…’
He flicked the light calmly. I stood directly in front of the tub, and in an instant, the gravity of light eliminated the easy shift we had thus far that evening. The woman lay with her back

against the porcelain tub, head lulling to her left side, arms propped back in repose. Her wrists drained into the tub; the water had the quality of diluted blood, bright red like a cinema, obscuring

the horror of her slow passing; drop by drop, depleted of life stuff. Did she relish in life’s release through this agony? Did she want to feel for herself the pain of death, pressing the accelerator

cheekily on the death drive in spite of her body’s fight to live?

‘Oye el eco de mi canto de cristal...oyo el eco de mi canto de cristal….’

Her face became the focus in just a moment of registering the blood. A small smile sat on her face, her eyes open; a full face of makeup creating a beautiful woman.

The light in the eyes was not truly gone, but perhaps this was a trick of the mind because of that demure smile. If I were to meet those eyes on the street, I may assume she was someone in love

Black eyes painted with more black, a bit inquisitive, and peaceful.

On closer inspection, it was noticed that in fact, the smile was held in place by two pieces of transparent tape, tucking the corners of her mouth into this absurd pout. My partner began

to call for further support for this suicide scene. For one reason or another, he did not turn off the music.

I was not able to. In front of me was a woman I love. Her pretty form as it was, her homey apartment, her quiet existence, the gorgeous bed, the song of desirous love; her care in placing the

tape to leave a smile for us to find, the love for beauty...perhaps it was my own indisputable pleasure in the comforts of a woman, mixed with the adrenaline of staring at death, and the ambiance

that warned me of this that created this feeling of intense love. Her song should play through again and again, I thought. We should stand here for the full song once again, putting away the

nervous narrative leading up to discovering her final scene, and let this scene she created for us fully soak into our souls.

I let the song play through again as I stood there with my partner in silence waiting for the rest of the response team. He looked across her several times guiltily, turning away into the living room.

I let my eyes absorb her entirety. The soul was still within this space, curated for those that found this now ghost of a body. Was it vanity or a final gift? Both?


Entering into the bedroom to find my partner once I deliberated this enough and resigned to the morbid interpretation this was in fact an act of cruel vanity, my eye caught the journal on the bed.

Written on the page was a variety of calls for more inner peace, explorations, resignations to past failures, acceptance of events. This woman had certainly thought to live at one point in the evening.

At the end of the page, though, stood a final tangent that brought clarity to her final decision.



“In my life I have done this over and over; yet never, does the central problem change. To make peace with myself seems an impossible task given in all my reading and observing people,

it doesn’t seem there is anyone at root to make peace with...I just appeared one day around 10, as did she, and we’ve wrestled since then...who am I, what am I to do? There is nothing, but

the creation of meaning; I am not creative enough nor dim enough to make due with that. All I can do is leave kindness and beauty for others in this life; that is usually enough to

make me feel good for a day.”

I looked back once again at the woman in the tub, her black eyes staring at me. Her small smile beckoned me like the angel outside the door. Her expression now took on a new interpretation.

It was one of a sad submission, offering me a gift in the form of a secret I already knew deep in my gut. I began to feel my eyes pool with tears as I too felt the emptiness she recounted in

her journal. Even in that moment, staring at a corpse, I yearned for reprieve from the great loneliness of my heart with someone who simply did not exist underneath the flesh.


“No se pierda por entre el rudo Manigual…”