To whom it may concern,

You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. Tomorrow will be the last day of my life. I didn’t want to leave this world just like that. It is difficult for a man to face his end, knowing he has passed through life as a ghost. Sometimes frightening people, but mostly invisible, transparent, with no effect on the things he touched. A man both living and dead, a dead man walking, if you want to call it that. The greatest mystery has been revealed to me in these last few days. What is the meaning of living? The answer was recounted to me by a dead dog I found several nights ago on the side of the road that leads to Atlacomulco: There is no meaning; it said amid the buzzing of the hundreds of flies feasting on its decomposing head. I am to share the fate of that poor dog. Rotting at the edge of some road, forgotten by everything and everyone. I didn’t want to die without someone knowing a little about me.

I’m writing this letter from the room where I’ve been living the last three months, in a small town called San Andrés Timilpan. I am from Monterrey, where you wake up every day, born on September 28, 1962. My mother said I was born during the night, but I no longer remember the hour. This letter is reaching you because I wanted some of my remains to return to my native land, even if these remains are abstract and spiritless, a jumble of words on cheap paper. And since I have no one, I chose you. I lived near where you live, but it’s been so long. I hope you don’t mind receiving this, and I ask you to please keep this letter, if only so a record that I existed survives. Some evidence that I was indeed a physical being and that my hands could touch the earth and feel the wind.

I’ve always liked drinking and I’ve always liked writing. I was never good at either. My mother passed away when I was 17 years old. She had a stroke on a warm summer day; she was sitting in her rocking chair. I found her hours later, thinking she’d fallen asleep. I didn’t know my father. My mother said he was a very important executive, and that he spent his time traveling on business. Was that true? I don’t know and you don’t know. When I was a child I believed her, but not anymore. They sent me to live with an aunt in Torreón after she died and I’m very grateful to my aunt, but I never felt at home. When I turned 19 I left. An acquaintance told me about some jobs that paid well in construction. I moved to Mexico City the following week.

I had several girlfriends, but the one I remember the most was a French girl named Carolina. I thought I was going to be with her forever. She told me we were going to live in the mountains, far from the city, and I imagined a little house with her, somewhere cold and foggy… oh, my friend… I was going to be happy. We walked everywhere together. I would skip work and we’d go for long walks around the city. It was not to visit places, nor to buy anything. We liked to walk together in the sun, sweaty and smelly. I still remember the date she left. May 12, 1982. She had received a call from her family in Canada. Her dad was sick. He was gravely ill with pneumonia. I said goodbye to her at the airport. She gave me her address in Canada and told me she’d be back in a couple of weeks. I wrote her a thousand letters, and she never replied, and she never came back. God only knows what happened.

I was not a good man. After Carolina, something dark spread within me. I used to hit women. I’ll say it outright, and I regret it. I was angry. I had a habit of drinking, but after Carolina left, I developed an ugly love for alcohol. I worked to drink. Every day I bought something. A cheap tequila, a smelly whiskey… And I never accepted it until recently, but I enjoyed waking up in unfamiliar places. Outside a canteen, or in the street without a shoe. Once I woke up under my bed, scared out of my mind, thinking I’d been kidnapped… oh the things that haunt one’s mind. It was what gave my days a sense of adventure. Stories to tell the other drunks. Drunkards telling drunken stories. That was me.

My mind isn’t so good anymore. The days and nights of my younger years now exist only as a half-forgotten dream. Time has slipped through my fingers like alcohol in my throat. The sun came and went at odd hours, sometimes ten times a day. Months went by without sunlight. Trapped in those perpetual nights, what I did most was sleep. I spent my days in darkness, stumbling around my kitchen and the streets, struggling to find my bed to finally sleep, hoping the following day would bring the sun back. I never asked myself how it was possible because I very well knew that the world wasn’t somehow broken. It was me.

I am old now for manual work. I sell chickens in the town market. The owner of the business is a fat woman, and every day she accuses me of stealing. Why should I need to steal? I ask her. I only need a place to sleep and a drink. And the few pesos she pays me is enough. I don’t complain.

I came here almost by accident. I had been commissioned to deliver a package to a certain Don Reyes. It was a box of old coins. Who knows what he wanted them for. The next day I came to the market and saw the ad for the chickens. I’ve been here three months. The brush and the trees start at the back of the little room where I live. A pack of wild dogs lives further into the mountains. At night I hear them running and fighting, and they say around here that they once killed a child… that they found him the next day half-eaten. Some villagers got together and went into the mountain and killed ten dogs. They burned the dogs a ways down the street. But they’re still out there. I hear them every night. God only knows where I’ve ended up.

I was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few months ago. I didn’t want any treatment. I pee blood from time to time and I have some pain down in the nether regions. But it doesn’t matter anymore. This whole thing is over. Here I sit, then. An old ghost, living still, past its expiration date. I’m sending you this letter tomorrow, and indeed tomorrow a train will run me over. Say hello to the mountains of Monterrey for me.

To the villagers, I hope to never see you again.

To Mexico City, you can keep my belongings.

Monterrey, I would have liked to see you again.

To Carolina, you should have told me why.

Dear sir or madam, thank you for reading my letter.

To the world, goodbye.

– Leon de la Garza