/// where are you? procrastinating.

Quiela observes parallels with the Lettres portugaises: love's power to move everybody except for the object of love of the abandoned woman; her constant anguish over her lover's silence, or over some cold, conventional, or commonplace greetings; taking the past as a refuge; making geographical waters a distancing factor between the lovers; realizing that one is writing more for oneself than for the addressee; and the final silence following a farewell promising not to write again. Amongst others, the heartrending laments in Quiela's letter of 7 November 1921, could find their place most comfortably amongst Mariane's laments in the Lettres portugaises:

"Te amo Diego, ahora mismo siento un dolor casi insoportable en el pecho. En la calle, asi me ha sucedido, me golpea tu recuerdo y ya no puedo caminar y algo me duele tanto que tengo que recargarme contra la pared

[I love you Diego, right now I feel an almost unbearable pain in my chest. On the street, it has happened that your memory hits me and I can walk no longer and something hurts so much that I have to lean against the wall]" (Quiela, pp. 13-14).

-Hortensia R. Morell, Crossed Words between the Lines: The Confusion of Voices in the Love Soliloquy of Elena Poniatowska's "Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela"