In the bathroom, I observe my reflection and I see the freckles that only certain rays of the sun can catch, I see my hair that always dances between glitter and carelessness, I see death in the brown of my eyes and I wait for the stretch of my lips until my mind remembers how to fake life.

I press my nails against the raw flesh of my hips and I smile until my veins burn, I smile until my knees tremble under the weight of so much ignorance. 

I remain like a statue in front of the mirror, in a challenge of gazes, using different masks for the lips to make their trick, so the freckles form a bridge of the sadness buried in my cheekbones and so I can see the stars in my eyes. 

The teeth are bathed in blood, the lungs are breaking in the control of my breath but still, I persist, I still push every corner of my lips to their meeting point. 

Hoping that my soul catches the happiness that I can no longer call my own.

TA.

It doesn't hurt to be alone,

it kills me to have no one, time crawls through my shadow and the pre-made phrases are more like a sentence than a help.

It's looking both ways before crossing and cars with buses and motorcycles and bicycles come diagonally but not one hits you. And it doesn't hurt to be alone, because I was born alone, I was raised alone, I was kept alone, and I and I know each other well.

I am my favourite smile of the sunrises, my favourite joke of the rainy days, my chosen romance of moonless nights, and my favourite anguish on the days without sound. 

And no, it doesn't hurt me that there isn't anyone for me, that the world turns in every step I take and the people avoid my gaze because they fear that my eyes will make that connection that keeps us bound to this piece of earth, and I no longer have any supplications to give because I’m getting used to it.

I’m turning into the colour of my wall and no longer asking, I’m letting my voice be the only thing that motivates me and my loneliness be the only thing that protects me. 

Because it doesn't hurt me to be just me, so maybe if I stop waiting and hoping for someone to notice me and pick me, my heart will stop crying every night because nobody loves us like we do. 

TA.

There are those Cordoba streets that I can no longer look at

my sight always skip buildings when my hearts hears your voice in the clouds

it leaves me a heartbeat away from a panic attack and My Love you were supposed to be a distraction

but in a cockroach way you buried yourself in the corners of my skin. 

So I avoid everything that has your mark and thus I become a beggar 

of these spent bubble gum flavored words because I can't say your name

without feeling 

every lick

every touch

and 

every breathe

in which your smile has enchanted me.

So I avoid everythings that comes with Cordoba 

because

I can no longer hold my breath every time your scent takes flight,

I can no longer cross out every street in which you have kissed me,

nor can I cut my ear to prove my love. 

And that's why I no longer call anything by the name we met. 

TA.

AND!

I say come to the circus known as Argentina

Where we are all unimpeachable

Everyone has the vaccine except those who are using their bodies to protect the defenceless.

I say come to know the country where the predecessor is always blamed but never the voters and it is always said as an echo of the anthem that the past is what buries us but it is never our actions.

Know the land where everything is hands-free, there is no such thing as justice when a woman's blood runs like sewer water, the land gained is what anyone occupies and riots are an everyday whim.

It is a free circus, we are of easy entry, we are that the joke it's no longer said behind our backs because we no longer have a face to protect and I would like to love what gave shape to the red lands.

But we are the silver circus where everything is a plague and the final act is to wait in which leader the guillotine will fall.

It is cake for everyone seeking poison in the game of Russian roulette and no one is number one except the rats who are using our flag to propel their gateway canoes.

Come, please, come see how we mourn the country that is flooded in simple clown shame.

TA.

We were in a cemetery, which obviously was a street in La Boca. It was summer that was spring and it was our last year that was our second to last and we were 20 but we believed ourselves of 17 and we were all the contradictions that begin this writing. 

Because we made promises that our tearful eyes were never going to fulfil, since you were too cowardly where I was true and I was too cold where you were shelter. 

And it doesn’t matter where we were, but it does matter that the city was quiet because it was a weekday, it was afternoon and you exposed yourself before me as if I was doing your autopsy. And you revealed to me that everything you are was a cause of abandonment and betrayal, and I only knew of holding your hand and promising you that in my youth that my dagger would never be in your back. 

Because you were silver and gold in what made my life, you weren’t passionate love but you did keep the flame burning, and you wanted intertwined hands where I expected hugs, we were a contradiction that no one spoke of as they prefered to romanticize us.

And it was that we were in a cemetery when I was left with loose arms and told you who I was without deception, with a broken voice and tired eyes. I left myself before you as a believer at the altar, and you? You just spoke of someone else while you stabbed your dagger in my back. 

TA. 

I refuse as a professional to acknowledge the defeat that this silence is, 

I protect the flame-like the last human believing that help is on its way and I am left shivering in the cold of the lost faith that there is still a tomorrow. 

Because I know that if I act, that if I react, Roma burns today, and I don’t believe that you could survive it, that you could accept that I am the cold that you flee from every winter, that my abandonment is more lethal than the pain that I speak of, that I deny not only because of a kindness that protects me but because I know how to hurt with this feeling.

So, I stay with the dead tea in my hands, believing that soon there will be someone that remembers my name, that before I have to report myself as missing someone will remember my existence, I must maintain the faith that while little by little I’m slipping through the cracks there’s still an S.O.S happening where my sight doesn’t reach.

Because Jesus and Judas, if I accept that this is the extension of the time of a dead man, this empire will crumble to the tune of my lyre.

TA.

Oh, Holy God

That takes care of us

Today I get on my knees

To pray as in a death row

To give me the indifference to this love that has brought me so much torture 

I beg for your understanding,

as this relationship has made me a fraud and a failure. 

It has turned me into a clown that doesn’t know how to hide its grief.

So hear this prayer that implores in its knees and eyes to the sky to please, for all the good that is left in this wicked world, to release me of this bastard and give me the opportunity to live without dragging the cross of pain that is to have ever chosen him.

TA.