Xiuhuitzil, Brian Durán-Fuentes

   Dalia returned to the hostel earlier than she expected. Upon entering, she felt a curious type of uneasiness making itself present inside of her. She was alone. Not the owner, nor any of the guests were present in their rooms. She knew this without a doubt the moment she sat on her bed inside her room and noticed she was unable to hear the slightest signal of life around her. Only a mirthful, blue hummingbird flying outside her window convinced her that this was not just a short dream before death came to her somewhere in the starving streets of the city. The soft sound of the bird's wings flapping in the stillness of spring air was all there was. Dalia closed her eyes. She had always found irritating how it was impossible to ignore the noise of the other guests' lives as they leaked through the hostel's paper walls: The loud conversations of the blond, young lady with her faceless guests, the cries of an old violin in the hands of a talentless man, and the owner's drunken love songs waking her up at midnight. And yet on such a fortuitous moment when she had the calm she had always wished for, Dalia felt despair.

    After staring at empty space for a moment, Sandro put his ear against the wall to hear if Dalia was also absent. He imagined that even hearing the sound of her breathing would bring him a certain relief, the nature of which he could not afford to accept. Still, It was pointless. He suddenly remembered Dalia had left the hostel about a month ago with a faint smile and good wishes for his future. Sandro went to the restroom to wash his hands as an excuse to see what was going on around his room. Only a clock was invulnerable to the lethargy of dust that seemed to have frozen every object in the hostel. He wondered once more where everyone was. Still having her in mind, Sandro couldn't help looking at his bedroom door in comparison to Dalia's. That amorphous dark stain which had been there even before Dalia arrived to the hostel still stood untouched while his own door shone with its spotless whiteness.

    Even though she was completely sure Sandro wasn't inside, Dalia hesitated to open his door. The anxiety appeared to be the same as the one she felt that winter night in which she gathered all her strength to knock that very door and declare unto him her innocent but deep affection. She remembered standing in that very hallway, stepping back and forth while barefoot, imagining a thousand different scenarios before going through with her decision. She felt guilty by merely touching the door with her delicate fingers, as if it involved Sandro's most fragile nerve endings being pressured to the point of rupture. Nevertheless, the thought of leaving things as they were was quickly dismissed by her determination not to live even one more day with such feelings repressed in the sterility of silence. Standing motionless, in contradiction with her hectic mind, Dalia eventually forced herself to open the door reassuring herself that this time, she had nothing to lose.

    Sandro stood inside Dalia's room. All of her things remained in the same place as the last time he had been there. Dalia had said to the owner she would come back for all her belongings, but she didn't mention when exactly. The blankets on her bed lied wrinkled and falling off the mattress; the torn blinds darkened the room along with the blue curtains, and a small heart drawn with the tip of a finger remained on her dusty television screen. An army of eyes followed Sandro's every move. Dalia had an extensive collection of plush animals scattered in every corner of her room like cartoon sentinels of an unfathomable mystery. Wrinkled clothes also lay eerily scattered like her ghost limbs of days past. He recognized the black dress she always wore for an important work interview underneath a pile of old textbooks, and her old denim jeans caught with one of its legs outside of her drawer, as if attempting an escape with a red shirt and a bra as allies. Sandro could almost breathe Dalia's very essence in her frozen whirlpool of possessions. He even smiled upon sight of the framed print of Le Mal du Mer au Bal, Au Bord d'une Corvette Anglaise he gave her as a birthday present. Still, Dalia's enigmatic labyrinth of a room was but an empty shell without the presence of her owner.

    Suddenly, Dalia heard a noise coming from outside. She quickly left the room fearing it was Sandro. She waited for a moment but no one entered the hostel, so she went back into his room. Dalia proceeded in her wanderings, setting her attention on his old, wooden desk full of neatly stacked notebooks. She sat on the chair and once again stared with disbelief at the emptiness of the walls hoping to see something different in the room through Sandro´s usual point of view. Still, the bed remained as geometric and perfect as before. His two lamps still stood parallel at each side of his window as the sun's beams pervaded every corner of the room. Dalia realized how few were the occasions in which she had actually been inside Sandro's room as she noticed a small photograph album on top of his drawer. It was open on a photograph showing Sandro surrounded by three little boys, perhaps his younger siblings. She felt tempted to flip through the pages, but ended up considering that was beyond the limits of her intrusion. She only wondered whether Sandro had really kept that one photograph of the two of them taken at a party of a friend they had in common. Dalia turned to his bookshelf and found several awards of excellence stacked face down in the shadow of a large row of books. Perhaps one of the things which Dalia admired the most in Sandro was his humility, his silent grace. She looked through the books but was unable to find the novel she had given to him on his birthday. She then refused to believe that the present he had given to her was but a polite response to her own. Surely, she thought, she meant more to him. The novel could very possibly had been in a drawer or his bag. Then as if an opposing side of herself rose to settle the issue once and for all, she turned her sight to an agenda on top of his desk and flipped through its pages. Across the dates, Sandro had listed important events, the birthdays of relatives, the exams in the semester, and even premieres of new films to be shown in theaters. But when it came to her birthday, the page was as blank as his bedroom walls. Dalia put down the agenda and sat down for a couple of minutes. The fluttering of wings was still the only thing audible. She began to think of how impossible it was to hear such a sound even in perfect silence. Perhaps it wasn't the hummingbird outside her window making that sound after all, but something strange and beautiful within her that she had neglected for too long.

    Sandro returned to his room with dozens of memories in his mind. He realized he really wished the sound he heard to have been Dalia returning for her things. Had he had the courage, he would have said goodbye to her as she deserved. Now he suffered the sadness of realizing that Dalia was his only friend in the hostel. Sandro sat down in his bed and took out an object from his drawer, the novel Dalia gave him. Sandro knew he would keep that book as long as he lived but would never read it, quite simply, because he wasn't interested. As he raised his eyes to the ceiling, he noticed a blue hummingbird fluttering in the center of the room.