My people

My toast was for the mediocre ones. The ones that didn’t have the gift, they had to work tremendously hard to get the words they have this day.

They didn’t have an insanely mad love that brought questions to the true author of his books. We were lucky enough to haven’t gone to war and come back with haunted looks and hungry for death. Yet, unlucky enough to write like a love affair was a strategic decision. We didn’t get lost in the ways of a person who had the same last name as the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. We wrote on notebooks and paper, in our skin, in your name and our life. 

We never thought the best of us and didn’t have a first memory of writing. 

But we did have the thirst. 

T.A.

It’s 1.37 and you are looking at me for confirmation, and I do hope that at 1.38 you find that I haven’t lie.

At 1.37 in the morning, I want to tell you, when your eyelids are heavy and the episode of Seinfield is a distant sound.

I want to sit in front of you, put my hands on your knees and say it to you slowly as it was a Sunday’s pray.

Stay quiet, taste the words and make of them what you want. 

However, let me say it when your mind is blank and you are about to say the name of the last album you heard. 

Let it be in the form of a surprise, the clown that jumps out of the box. 

T.A.

Not dreams, work

I wish I had a dream as big and beautiful as him. 

But sadly my generation doesn't dream that much. Because we don't have the time for those. We are trying to make it through the next hour. To get the equals rights and waiting for those to multiply to more than two heads of problems, and God we want to sleep. 

Yet the revolutions never ended in peace and resolution. They ignite more battles and the work isn't done when the sun goes down. There is a kid been shot by friendly fire, a woman running from the dark and an innocent hiding from the police. 

There are people been moved from their lands because someone wants money. There are species of animals dying, and my cousins are screaming for free and legal abortion in 2019. There are countries that are on fire and the people won’t leave behind their roots. 

I do wish I had a dream as amazing as him, a possibility waiting to happen, a united front. Yet, I heard word that in my country there is a fight for power while in Korea there is a threat of bombs. 

In India the women are scared for their life, in Africa, they don't have enough medicine. And Salvador, Salvador is a lost country. 

T.A.

Change the life

If I changed a second,

I wouldn’t hold my breath,

I would scrape my knees,

I wouldn’t regret the lost seconds

I would allow people to leave

(And I would forget your name)

more pain and less doubt

I would stop his arms form abandoning me

and shout the names of my beloved from the top of the mountain

I wouldn’t let the opportunity given

to burn out in one breath

I would give my life to live it as I wouldn't know,

until the eternity that is given.

T.A.

Sin

My sins with you have been those of laughing with you, my smile on your neck and your arms on my hips. The way I looked at my reflection in your eyes and how you stroked my knuckles while we walked. 

They are those of perpetuating the street where we held hands. That for me the last bank where we talked with honesty is a sacred place. Sometimes I cry because you lied and hurt me. I was jealous, possessive and crazy with you yet I was also raw, exposed and yours.

And you stole yourself.

My mortal sin is the one of still hoping for a cross of college. That you have the scarf around your neck and the tic on your nose. 

T.A.

Depression at five

There are times when there is the aftertaste of copper in my mouth. My fingers are liquid and my tears press against my chest. Where failure is what floods my mind and I don’t see a way out.

There are times in which I don’t believe to have the strength and courage to defeat my demons. Where I stand quiet and let them attack me, in those times I feel hollow and lonely. 

There are times where I get lost. Where there isn’t any hope in the possibilities of my life, is darkness and pain in the movement of the bones. Where the sun goes out and the moon enters yet I am still against the door of my room.

T.A.

Coward

I imagined getting away, growing up, falling and happy. I made goals out of them, yet I never did make it. Because I am afraid of not knowing. Of the way her smile can light up a room and how warm his arms are. Or to call another street by its own name and sleeping in different beds. 

I was terrified of living, of holding hands and making promises. Of breathing one second at the time and doing right this time, of not being sleepy and high all the damn time. 

My bones were shaking thinking about it. Ready to scram, and God I was praying for the wrong thing because I couldn't do it. 

I couldn't live, because feeling his smile against my skin, hearing the sound of my name ending with us. Smelling the scent of your clothes on my dreams telling the same old jokes and laughing at them, was drowning me. 

So to live, to live would be... 

T.A.

Letters to my love

My Love,

You requested a recount of the times I said I love you. You said you needed to know when it was I said it for the first time, left in clear that my heart was beating for you. Warned you all the power you had on me. Your request was fair.

The problem was the truth.

Because I never did say it to you, I said it to another person and she hated you. I felt it was too big of a word for my lips yet too small for us. Every time I thought of saying it, it didn’t felt like it was saying how it felt being near you, it felt wrong. 

I didn’t say it because I didn’t find it necessary. I thought it was obvious in the way I smiled with you and looked at you with the intention of going blind. My darling, you saw me cry, and you held me for thirty minutes and I didn’t kiss you when I should have.

It was stupidly obvious.

I said it with my own words, with a quiet: Te quiero. 

That was it. The feeling of chocolate melting on your tongue. The warmth and happiness spreading form toes to fingernails. It's one leg hanging off the roof. I said it with an honest heart, stare fixed on you and with the rapid beat of my heart. 

It’s the way I used to hold you from your elbow, your crooked smile and sleepy walk, it was the feeling of November. 

It was far better than a simple I love you, everyone loves something, someone, anything, its easy like ABC. 

Honey, I must have said it three to five times, from messages to in person, I said it when I was feeling it. When you where the light in the night and you tried to lie to me when you wore that mask and said I was dumb. I said it loud and clear because you mattered. 

You were in the know. 

Talk to you soon,

All my love,

T.A.

Midnight thoughts

Souvenir

I still have the colour of your jacket, the aroma of your cigarette with that of your clothes. The brush of your beard and the raw smile. I still have so much left that it leaves me intoxicated. Because before you, they only left me with colours or one word. But from you, from you, I have the letter A to a circle.

There is you against a window talking on the cell phone. And before that is laughing on the streets sounding like broken glasses. You are haunting all the streets, and there is you in the colour blue and mustard. You are printed in my memory between tea and beer.

T.A.

The song

I remember it as if it was yesterday.

In a way, it was, in the old 93, the one I don’t take anymore, that I heard a song that told what we all where in the year of 2016. When we were more innocents, shallows and friends.

I can still taste the lyrics, tattooing themselves on my skin and I was capable of thinking that it was true. The answer to the question was yes, we are made to break, and we were never good for commitment. And yes that bus took me to our old hug, to the time that I was crying for you. God, if despair had a name it would be that Friday afternoon. 

I was broken, needy and in love. 

I knew we were going to lose, I did, I am sorry, yes My love we were too much. Toxics, firsts, possessives, idiots, friends, lost, needy, liars, imperfects. And in that song is that emotion. The desperation, in knowing that I had lost you that moment I had greeted you into my life. 

T.A.