(To Pablo Martín López, or as I knew him: Paul Martin)
Life is curious: sometimes, without prior notice, it works magic. It deals the cards and, even if it doesn't seem like a winning hand, it ends up being exactly the one you needed. Even if winning wasn't the purpose.
At seventeen I wrote my first verses. They were those of a young man going through his first love, an enthusiastic imitator of the Bécquerian echoes that inhabited me then and that, in some way, still inhabit me. I dreamed of dedicating myself to writing since childhood, but it was a dream I kept in silence, like someone who keeps something fragile so it doesn't break when spoken.
Until he appeared.
That little man with a dark complexion and a deep, slow voice not only explained literature: he ignited it. Where others saw syllabi and text commentaries, he saw destiny. And in the middle of any class, he said what I didn't dare to say out loud: that my voice would be heard.
He did not only teach me to analyze poems or to pass exams. He taught me to love literature as one loves an intimate homeland. And, more importantly, he taught me to live with dignity; not to let anything—not even an illness when it wanted to darken everything—paralyze my steps.
With time I understood that Pablo had become my Ramón Sijé, and I, humbly, that Miguel Hernández who would have written an elegy for him without hesitation.
Today I write. But every time I do, that student who needed someone to believe first is still there.
Thank you, teacher.
For being light when I still didn't know how to name the darkness.
For betting on me before I learned to do it.