In kindergarten, without knowing much about fauna and flora, her feminine instinct drew her gaze toward a beautiful Yellow Poppy.
What did she see in the flower? What did the flower see in her? Questions without answers, answers without questions.
“I live among symbols and letters. I live in my imagination. Sometimes absent, sometimes present. Always thirsty for love. To find the symbol of that dream, even at this point,” Roxana Cecilia Matienzo Carrión confesses in a conversation about possibilities.
We decided to explore her mystery together. To decipher the Yellow Poppy—the symbol that recurs in her life. In her dreams, her stages, and her evolutions that have now spanned seven decades.
I portray her in my mind as if she were a flower—and we freely explore her humanity. Partners in a cup of coffee, in the interruptions of a tribe of three, and in the joy of sharing.
Roxana is a daring mystery, a nostalgic smile, an adventure on land with wings. A woman who disguises herself as a character in her own novels.
She is also a daughter, an older sister, a savior of quixotic justice, a lawyer in her first career, a writer, a mother, and a wife. A cancer survivor, a faithful friend, a woman of celebration, a courageous genius, and a troubled peacemaker.
But above all, she is a woman who frequently loses and finds herself in turbines.
He possesses a privileged and baroque mind. But at the same time, he needs to float flat. This is because his ability to construct characters—to mythologize them, to magnify them, and to make them disappear, both in his real and fictional life—is astonishing. He also has the ability to lose himself in his dualities, depending on the circumstances of his time.
And the truth is that Roxana, in almost all her eras—more or less—has been a versatile woman. Quick-witted, with a fast heartbeat.
He remembers his great teacher in first grade, Maestra Beléndez, who, apart from being amazed by his inquisitive observations, his gift for writing and his fascination with books, claimed to have a sign hanging on his desk that read: Learn to Control Yourself.
That sign, she says with a laugh, has been a reminder of her essence. Because she lives between the hustle and bustle of diverse worlds. She enjoys balancing between human natures. They intrigue her, and she absorbs them as if they were her own.
It is precisely these frequencies—high, medium, and fast—that are her best catalysts. They led her to publish three novels without fear: Love Drunkenness -based on her parents’ relationship. “It’s my most intimate novel, published without writing skills, without structure, but vital for my development.”
Studious and recognizing her learning potential, Roxana decided to take a writing workshop with Mayra Santos Febres and later published Entretelas. In this second novel, flowing between history and fiction was a laborious pleasure.
Investigate, Speculate, Imagine are living verbs in her. As recently as this summer, after five years of activating her favorite verbs—Investigate, Speculate, Imagine—she published: A bordo del Normandie , a novel she recently presented at the Bar Association.
I haven’t read it. I’m not a literary critic. I’m a digital pen that listens, observes, and spells out with brushstrokes the hundreds of shades of yellow that color this luminous woman.
Roxana Cecilia, melodious as her name, is a woman writer. A sentence in continuous construction where order, syntax, and grammar are irrelevant
It is important to satisfy Love. To feel like a Yellow Poppy and to love oneself without control.
