I looked at the little statuette in my hand. It was my grandma’s. I didn’t really know her too well cause she was locked in Toronto General but she took me to the park once. I was just 5, but I remember it quite well. She took me to the park and pushed me on the swing and we had ice cream. I had my favorite, chocolate with vanilla sprinkles and she had pralines and cream. Then we sat on the park bench. She hugged me and we looked up at the clouds. After, my mom came and picked me up, but I came to nana’s house a couple of times. Her home was really nice and all, small and narrow, opening up onto a dead end street. Every single time she showed me something new, Soviet coins, Indonesian carvings, but the last visit was the most memorable.

She showed me a little soviet figurine, a blue-eyed ceramic figurine with an orange dress and all. But what really got me was the story behind it. Nana explained how this ceramic figurine came into her possession. It all started in a dreary apartment on the outskirts of Moscow. Her family wasn’t what you called well to do, but they made ends meet. She always wanted a ceramic figurine, but her family couldn’t afford it. Every single birthday she asked for one and finally on her tenth birthday she ripped the wrapping paper eagerly to discover an elegant porcelain statuette. Then, life became real tough for her.

Her dear father died, and after the funeral the two of them sold everything they had, just for the boat tickets. Her mother asked her to sell the figurine, but after those tears in Nana’s eyes she relented. They were only allowed one tiny black suitcase on the boat so they left several unsold clothes and packed the figurine. After, the two made it overseas, and settled in Toronto. And then came my mother and eventually me.

I always wanted to visit her in her home, but it was that phone call that stopped me. The hospital called my mom and told her that Nana had leukemia and survival was unlikely. We saw Nana in the hospital room. She tried all her best to smile. The figurine was sitting on the counter next to her. I wanted to talk to her, but she fell asleep. We returned a couple more times, but every time her condition worsened. On our last visit she smiled and said, “Take it, I don’t have much time left” in the sweetest voice ever. I thanked her before my mom told us to let her rest. On the way out I waived to her, only to see her eyes close one last time.

Then the hospital phoned my mom and explained our loss. There was a funeral and all, but I stayed home. I sat in my bedroom, sobbing. I took the figurine out of the box and looked at it. Her golden locks of hair, the gaze of her blue eyes. I put it upon the windowsill.

Every day, I look at it remembering the amazing times I had with her, she will always have a place in my heart.

The grandioseness washed away, the derelict churches, shantytowns across the hills, those hungry, those thirty, those lying in those dirt filled streets

I ask one of them, veins popping out, life sucked out of him

He responds the tide changed from the words of ancestors, the good and the evil lies in the Cerro Rico in its silver veins

The beauty Pedro says is that a sILver road, the sun radiating across the bridge, spanning to the heart of Madrid could be build, the vastness of silver that lied here

The disgust is that the journey back could be on bones and skulls; a testament to those who died there and those who die as we speak

The city has changed from a small Spanish colonial town to a city, shantytowns across the edges but inside those mines, deep under the skin of Cerro Rico clocks never spin, only the silver veins now bleed aluminium but the men still bleed blood so much they rarely see past a half century

I leave Pedro, the lucky one

I walk in the rain, in the cold. I look to right and see Cerro Rico but my intuition leads me astray into the city’s Grand Cathedral away from that vicious cycle that plagues the city, the tide that will never arrive.

The glitter of the sea has always allured sailors. Many, many years ago, there lay a great ship mercilessly tossed in the sea of tears. On the stern lay a great admiral dressed in a blue jacket with a pocket next to the heart. However, he was subdued by their beauty, by their glances and by their songs. They sung so beautiful, so melodically. He felt entranced and eventually fell of the deck. In the water, he opened is eyes for an instance to be met by the beautiful, lime green eyes of a mermaid. She left him there on the shore.

Several hours later his fellow men came and found him. She listened closely as he said I remember my saviour, her lime green eyes, her diamond crown. If I can’t find her there will always be a void in my heart. She looked up to him only to find him looking to another. As the siren came he caressed her. The green-eyed girl left.

She then heard the song, the siren song again. She rushed to the beach only to find blood seeping from his ears. She lay there immobile on the beach. If one visits the beach they will find the mermaid’s crown on top of the admiral’s jacket in the heart pocket. She was always his queen in life and in the afterlife. And of the siren you can hear the waves hitting the shore, bringing you closer to the sea.