La mano crispada de Petra llevaba un manojo seco de paja cuando se acercó a la cama donde yacía el cuerpo de su padre. Efectivamente, tenía los ojos abiertos, como si se hubiese ido con el deseo de ver a alguien. Sin remordimiento y sin odio, la mano de Petra se deslizó por la cara pálida del anciano y le cerró los ojos. Ella también cerró los de ella y sin poder contenerlas, unas lágrimas rodaron por las mejillas cuarteadas de la mujer y fueron a caer en el manojo seco que llevaba en las manos.

Cuentan, que del manojo seco comenzaron a crecer flores violetas y mariposas amarillas. Otros dicen que no, que las hojas reverdecieron y que cuando Petra volvió a su casa, los árboles retoñaban con si la larga sequía, luego de la muerte del padre, hubiese pasado.

HASTA UNA PRÓXIMA OPORTUNIDAD, AMIGOS

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Versión en inglés
Before the news reached San Casimiro de las Casas, Petra knew. In dreams she had been warned of the death of Eulogio, her father, with whom she had been at odds years before.
Your father will die and you will have to close his eyes,” she had heard a voice tell her in a dream.
That same dream she had told Dorilda, who had functioned as sister, mother, friend, after Eulogio had thrown her out of the hacienda “La Esmeralda”:
In dreams they told me that the old man was dying, Petra expressed as they gathered what little the land gave them. Dorilda made a sound, one of those sounds she made to affirm, to say that she had heard:
And that it will be my turn to close his eyes so that he can leave in peace, assured Petra looking at the withered, dry harvest, between her withered hands, also withered, cracked by the work. Dorilda emitted the guttural sound again, as if so many words were not necessary to communicate with each other, as if only one sound were enough.
It had been five years since everything had happened, since Petra had been left without a father and Petra had been left without a daughter, or at least that was what Eulogio said when he grabbed a handful of earth from the garden of his daughter's house and spat it out four times:
This will only be straw: a hill with a single leaf, he said and spat again. Then he mounted his horse and rode off leaving behind him an ash-gray dust. Petra had stood with her mouth open, trembling, aware of the danger of that paternal desire, of those words spoken in anger before an all-hearing god. So Petra, when the harvest began to blight, when the fruits, unripe, began to rot, Petra understood: her father's curse had reached heaven.
But it was not only the land that remained dry and without fruit, it was also Petra who had to accept that her womb would not be fertile land, that it would not bring forth life and that it would also remain empty of seed. That is why Juancho left, because he wanted children and Petra could not give them to him, and although he was the reason for the quarrel between Petra and her father, he did not look back when he left and never came back to look for her.
Petra's twitching hand carried a dry bundle of straw as she approached the bed where her father's body lay. Indeed, his eyes were open, as if he had gone with a desire to see someone. Without remorse and without hatred, Petra's hand slid down the old man's pale face and closed his eyes. She also closed hers and, unable to hold them back, tears rolled down the woman's chapped cheeks and fell into the dry bundle she held in her hands.
They say that violet flowers and yellow butterflies began to grow from the dry bunch. Others say no, that the leaves greened up and that when Petra returned home, the trees sprouted as if the long drought, after her father's death, had passed.