La Última Palabra (The Last Word), a short story by Chilean writer Alia Trabucco Zerán looks at the childhood game of resonances and echoes called The Telephone in Chile, The Broken Telephone in Argentina, and Chinese Whisperers in the UK. The story came about from an obsessive image that formed in Alia’s mind – an image of blushing – as a result of thinking about the resounding of words. What is blushing? How come words can cause something as visual as blushing? Is blushing the echo of words in our bodies? Is blushing the result of a word that, all of a sudden, wants to have a physical presence?
La Última Palabra (The Last Word) was published in the original Spanish alongside the English translation by Sophie Hughes in the print publication Resonance 1 on 1 September 2019.