Yesterday I found a school notebook, full of flowers and leaves, from when I was a kid, from primary school homework

 

there

I realized

that they all were missing something

 

a rose its thorns

a sunflower its leaves

an alstroemeria its colors

a daisy its golden center

a pansy its memories

a jasmine its purity

of the lilies only the branches remained on the paper

 

but they were all there

after all this time

and it seemed

that despite everything

they had fared well

 

I began to think

where did they lose

the thorns

the leaves

the colors

the golden heart

the memories

the purity

the branches

 

I supposed

that one day

like this

they just lost them

and continued like that

all this time

being

roses

sunflowers

alstroemerias

daisies

pansies

jasmines

lilies

 

throughout my life

I have lost

the thorns that defended me

when there was no more will

and only the gesture

of indifference remained

goodbye

 

I have lost the leaves of the lived days

counted in withered pasts

that I could no longer live

but through

other leaves

 

I have lost the colors

in hotel rooms

and I have walked away barefoot

on a path of glass

 

I have also lost

the heart many times

and slammed doors

when everything tired me out

 

I have also lost the memories

of all those battles

white

with hangovers

of emptiness and

of nothingness

 

and I have lost the purity

losing my mind over and over again

it has gone a thousand times

rolling

down stairs

sidewalks

roads

airports

until it disappeared

 

and so I remained

without thorns

without leaves

without colors

without a heart

without memories

without purity

without branches

 

and I have told myself then

that despite time

and despite everything

I have fared well

 

so I have entered

broken

into a primary school notebook

of a grown child

and I have started to wait

for you to come

open it and ask yourself

how

when

where

was it

that I lost all this

that I’m missing

 

 

and maybe then

You

only You

will start to look for

all of that

for me

 

 

Yesterday was a beautiful day, after all it was almost the weekend and that tension from the beginnings and first days disappeared.

Sometimes no one believes that I am real, but the truth is that I really am real. Yes. I pay taxes, I have an ID, and let the system say it, otherwise, it asks me for a photo every year and it’s the only one that knows about my metamorphosis.

Yesterday was a beautiful day as I already said, and I felt that I wasn’t real, just as they had told me. I could heard your voice and then even my voice trembled a bit, my hands too, I felt very detached from reality, maybe I’m just an entity that wants to be real, but it’s already passed.

I also want to tell you that the weather was fine (the sky was clear at times and then it would darken and it seemed like rain was coming, but you know it never rains here. I thought about writing about it on some post-its, but the sky must be tired of me always trying to write about it, poor thing).

I was thinking that besides the life here and there, I have other lives too, the life on Mondays and the life on Sundays, the life alone and the life accompanied, the external life and the life of confinement, the life in winter and the life in summer, the free life and the life full of seams, all of them I hang in the closet and choose carefully each morning before dressing in them.

I used to wake up naked without knowing which life to put on and thus I spent the whole day, like a blank paper, without calendar or clock, without thinking about anything, without plan or schedule, without name or place.

But I woke up very early with a big smile, and having the suit ready, I dreamed of you, it was almost real that scene, in which that pasta with vegetables and prawns made us smile, because it accompanied us, your smile was warm, like my hands, and I think I dreamed all that because surely we talked about food, about your tastes so precise and precious, about my weaknesses after seafood, and a bit of everything, and surely I fell asleep with a calm and happy smile (again I returned to your voice).

Tonight maybe I’ll dream that we’ll be cats (and stray), alone sitting in a doorway and without hugging or anything, just sitting watching Lima wilt and moisten in winter, with the tiny full moon, and surely we’ll move our tails, look at each other, just to tell each other with a glance that we have made it, that we reached our first goal, to be together.