On letting go

Long after the rupture, I kept a photo of you in my wallet. I came to realize this about two months after, when as I was buying a pack of gum, or shampoo or maybe bananas. Something ordinary. I was simply going about my day, when suddenly your face unwillingly popped into my line of vision.

My heart fluttered and I hated myself for it.

I looked at the photo in disbelief. Small, monochromatic and threatening. Your eyes were piercing, and my left lobe did its job but too well. Remembering, unfortunately is much too easy. I did something, in that moment, that surprised me. I tucked the photo back into a corner of my wallet where it couldn't be easily seen, but would be kept close nonetheless. Like a token. As if it meant something, even though deep down, I knew better.

I did it anyway.

Long after the rupture, I kept a photo of you in my wallet. Days passed, and as you travelled by my side, things began to change. I learned to skate. I went to therapy. I played my clarinet after four years of neglect. I bought a different kind of toothpaste. I fell in love again.

I still caught a glimpse of your frozen face from time to time in the midst of interchanging bills for receipts, but everytime, my brain registered you differently, as if you were aging. As if the changes in me, were directly correlated to the changes in you.

Time heals all wounds. Even the ones you nurture.

I kept you in my wallet until your eyes became just eyes. No promise. No caress. Until your smile became a curve and not a secret. Until I could no longer hear your laugh. I kept a photo of you in my wallet until I stopped believing you would blink. Until I forgot about the wrinkles in your suit. Until the waves in your hair lost their salt. I kept a photo of you in my wallet until I stopped wishing on your eyelashes. Until you looked more like a stranger than a lover. More like a portrait than a friend. More like a memory, that was never mine to begin with.

And on the day, when I could no longer recognize your face, on the day when I struggled to remember your name, I took the photo, lovingly, between my index and thumb, opened my speeding car window, and let it go.

Don't
forget
the struggle.

To loves that could have been but never were

Hello Lover,

Soft glances over broken bottles
you're getting ready to leave
with the morning air
and I can't stop you
and I can't watch you.
and I can't hold you
back.
because you can't hold back
what isn't yours.
and you certainly were never mine.

sometimes I wonder
if I myself,
was ever mine.

But lover,
that misty morning
in December last year,
or decade,
when our lips brushed
and our bones gasped in wonder,
under the warmth of two hearts of stone,
that moment,
when the universe collapsed
and reformed
in the blink of your eyelids,
that moment,
is mine.

Like the countless others,
when the globe stopped revolving,
to admire
two cold beings
on fire.
All those moments,
that history books have forgotten about
all of them,
are mine.

My mother had taught me
in 2nd grade
that you can't hold on
to anything at all.
Because holding on is sad
it takes away
the ability to live,
and dream
and allow happiness
to enter.

Maybe that is why,
I've learnt to let go
more than to hold tight,
and sometimes,
when the wind asks me,
about the lovers I lost
and the loves I didn't hold close,
I laugh, but do not respond.

I can't tell the wind
or the howling voices
of the universe,
that I've made museums
of human beings
inside me,
colonies of the ways,
they've formed me
live in between my skin cells
and every time
a new person decides to leave
I make a home for them
in the vacant galaxies
of my lungs

So that every breath I ever take
from here on,
smells a lot like,
them,
the loves that could've been
but never were.

Mira

Recuerdas los días oscuros? Los días en los que incesantemente rompías tu propio corazón, una y otra vez? Recuerdas como tuviste que dejar la poesía a un lado durante un tiempo porque las metáforas se apropiaron de tu realidad? Cargabas un ladrillo en el pecho y costaba trabajo respirar. Hasta las catarinas eran capaces de generar en ti un aguacero y te carcomía algo desde tu centro. Los días en los que tus raíces se desprendieron y tu sangre hervia. La incineración duele, y el renacimiento también. Pero mírate ahora, con tus ojos deslumbrantes y tu sonrisa guerrera, y tu mente, mas fuerte que nunca. Mira como brillas, después de la tormenta. Mira como pulsas. Mira como flotas. Mira, mira, mírate.

Some nights I wonder
how much of me
you gave to her.

The hardest thing

One of the hardest things 
you will ever have to do, my dear 
is grieve the loss of a person 
who is still alive.

Life after Death

You left

and I died, 

but at least
now I realise
that there is indeed
life
after
death.