Mexico City /
By Eduardo López Cafaggi
Illustration: Ricardo Figueroa, courtesy of Nexos
Tennis is a deceptive sport: its coldness is courtship, its silence is music, its eternal moment. More than once I have confused closeness with desire and desire with affection. But intimacy is not measured at skin level, but in the space between two souls. When I last saw her, the limits of the body dissolved under my sheets, we were strangers. At twenty-four meters—and a net in between—I thought I understood. A sore loser blames what was not in his hands: the tension of the strings, the breath of the wind, the reflection of the sun. I keep thinking about the surface we chose. On the one hand, the cement courts do not show the patina of time; on the other, the grass courts never forget, since the mark of movement remains in their faded corners. Right in the middle, the clay on the courts south of the city has a short-term memory. It’s brick dust. Two or three hours remember the miniature craters left by the ball and our steps, which lengthened when we stumbled. Then it rains or they are swept away or someone erases them by playing a game of eroticism and distance.
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