*

And how long do you think you’ll go on writing? the boy who worked in the soap factory asked again. I could have said anything, but opted for simplicity. I don’t know, I said. What about you? I started writing because poetry sets me free, sir, and I’m never going to stop, he said, with a smile that barely hid his pride and determination. As an answer, it was too vague and declamatory to be convincing, yet somehow it gave me a glimpse of the factory worker’s life, not as it was then but as it had been when he was fifteen, or maybe twelve. I saw him running or walking through the outskirts of Gómez Palacio, under a sky that looked like a rockslide. I saw his friends and wondered how they could possibly survive. Yet, one way or another, they probably had.

*

'Gómez Palacio', by Roberto Bolaño

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