Missing you is easy (when I’m alone) its I inhale (and there's your scent) I exhale (and the black dots are your eyes)it's that every action I do leaves me in your streets and and and and and I want to see you (until I’m left without sight) and I want to taste you (until you become my palate) I want to have you (until there is no more me) I want to know you (until I can't miss you). Because it's rain, its thunder, its uneven, It's today, It's yesterday and I (swear) that I miss you to the point of unbearable and pitiful because (you made me laugh) you were easy with (complicated) and (toxic) and (there) and I should say no, but not having you makes me want you. And (God) I’m my own karma, but I’m great in wanting what I (don’t) have and denying what I (do) have because missing you is easy, I sleep and (I think of you), I walk and (I get lost in you) I live and (I talk about you), I write and (its all about you) 

 

TA.

Today I wish you:

That when you go to sleep you feel my presence nearby and say my name as if you were invoking Gabriel, and thus when you dream that you do it with all the colours that you saw me in. 

That when you are crossing avenues, that you only know by pubs, that you believe you see me in the reflection of a bookshop that has been dead longer than you, me and everyone. And that your cold autumn fingers reach out to touch what the wind already blew away.

That when you’re among friends and the beer is colder than your chest without your heart, and while everyone talks, but you remain silent, that you think you hear someone call out my name and from there, your eyes, which are the darkness of a supernova, won’t rest until they never find me. 

That I hope that you are in the trembling of the cell in which you write and delete, write and delete, write and delete, the number that you erased from your life. But that’s still tattooed between the fingerprints of all your no for me, and that when you send your apologies that my silence will be deafening.

That I want you to know that in my exhaustion and pain there is more affection than I ever said when your body was so close that it was a sin to not kiss it (Father I have sinned).

That when all the wishes have been spent, the candles have been blown, the stars have gone out, you take out the Brazilian flag lighter and with closed eyes, you wish that on this night you aren’t the only one with insomnia.

TA.

She laughs between every word she says, the smile never leaves her face, and it's beautiful, she has this je ne se pais that leaves you lost in her eyes. Because God, if she knows how to laugh with her whole body, from the stomach to lips, from tears to wrinkles, and never, in your whole life, have you seen something more tragic. 

Because she laughs, and laughs, and laughs, while your fingers turn in pleas of stop because it isn't beautiful, it's horrible, it's sad, and you want her to cry, to crumble and to fall. 

You don’t want the laugh of angels and greatness, you don't want the laugh of stars and fireflies, you don't want her tears to be sweet and her kisses to be of porcelain.

You want it to hurt, for her screams to be of a banshee, for her hands to be claws to Hades, for her eyes to be pleas. You don't want her to play the ludo but to tell you all the truths that she doesn't hide behind the masks that are bathed in trauma. 

You want her to stop everything that she believes that protects you from her and her lies, you want her to stop being as she should be and to be as she is. Because it hurts, it kills you how she looks at you and laughs, and laughs, and laughs, it’s a shivering of grave 24hrs a day and God you know how to beg because she never stops. 

She looks at you, she speaks, and it’s: “Please, God give her the strength to face her demons”, she finds you, she tells you, and it’s: “Jesus, please give her the courage to tremble the lips and let the tears fall”, it’s that she sees you, she laughs, and it's: “Please fall into my arms that I would die holding you” 

But, she only knows how to laugh, laugh, laugh, because she tells you that if she cries, if she accepts it, if she falls, if she crumbles, if she shakes, the house could never return to its foundations.

TA.

It's a siren's song what my skin commits every time I seek punishment, it's a lost caress that makes me pay a visit to the grave every time my eyes look for blood. It’s an unexpected invitation, but a desired one that happens every time my nails find the burning in the veins. And it’s all poetry when you look for excuses to keep the heat in the pain, just to silence the soul.

Because everything sounds more beautiful in art when you show the canvas of your arms with a laugh that is a choking cry. And it is a word that remains in vomit when we say that it is sick the way we are butchers. 'Cause, it feels like a goodbye kiss that never ends, and your body just wants these murders as to not feel guilty of all this coming and going. 

TA.

Forever (until after my death) I’ll carry the guilt of how I left you in oblivion (but, we always were, but) I couldn’t continue with the crumbs you made of my heart. 

(I know that perhaps you loved me, I know that maybe we were nothing) BUT I had to choose me (Believe me, that hurt me more than not being able to hear your laugh any more) there will be no apologies that reach your ears (or enough apologies) BUT I couldn’t with the sadness of having and not having you. 

(And the worst of all is that I waited for you) because I had faith (stupid faith) (wicked faith) (abusive faith) that in three days you would come back to me (but, if you never did before, why would you this time?).

I don’t know, maybe I thought that this time you would realize that your candy words wouldn’t be enough, I thought that perhaps you would do more than what you said, I thought and believed that this time if I was you, and you were me, you would try again.

(Now I know that was wishing that the world turned counterclockwise) so I’m sorry (I’m sorry for surviving your pain, but causing you my pain) I’m sorry for saying: “Me before you” (sorry for still practising your name in every sentence) sorry for wanting to cross you everywhere (sorry for carrying the guilt but not serving the sentence) sorry for putting the dot but not writing the end.

TA.

How to be a woman

Is so easy that anyone can do it:

You go with the shirt with the neckline, the red lips, the hair against the wind, your gaze is a middle finger to the sun, yet you fear the eyes that never rest on yours. 

You keep walking with the short shorts, which are more than five fingers from the knee, that lets your skin breathe during summer, for which you starve yourself of hunger, of gym, of running, of mirrors to feel as they say that you should. 

However, you feel his hand in your pocket even though no one is there, you feel the weight of that behind you even though he looks the other way, you feel his fingers inadvertently brush your skin. You keep walking, your hair, it’s a ponytail, then a bun, then you cut it with a blade because it’s hot and also because you don’t want an extra arm for them to grab you.  

The red lips are now the colour of your skin, there are also two crosses because you don’t want to make a sound and let the world know that you are still alive. But you also want to make a sound and make the world realize that you are alive. 

They start calling you crazy and hysterical, the middle finger gaze starts to be called a war scream, you keep your back straight even when you fear the eyes that never look at yours, you take long strides even when your fingers tremble to hide the short shorts.

The hands are still there, the eyes are still there, the catcalls are the horns, the whistles are the cops, the invitations are your allies, the insecurity is genetic. 

It’s easy to be a woman when since birth you have been taught to fight for who you are.

TA.

Excursus

Did you know that in war, no one wins?

They tell you: This country won, and the other lost, this side won and the other disappeared, those died and this survived, but nobody ever says how they all lost. 

Yes, there is the right side and the side we don’t speak about, there is the eternal shame and the honour with the glory, but there is no victory because this is the truth about war:

The blood never ends, it becomes an ocean of bodies buried in mud and names lost in abbreviations of M.I.A. And there is no grandiose way of saying we have won with our heads held high without the truth of the trembling lip because there are too many empty houses, there are worlds of cemeteries, there are too many children crying for parents that: Where is the victory? Why wasn't talking ever an option? A gun is taken and handed to the hands of a child, and they tell them to shoot, so they can save themselves, but: Who saves them from the burden of killing? Who wipes the blood off their eyes? Who forgives them for their demons? You give power to an egomaniac, and he plays with the life of people as if it was tic-tac-toe. 

What is war? If not too many sayings that are alive till this day to make jokes of, without remembering the bombs that massacred, the ships that mutilated, the planes that cut, without thinking that my land today is a road of bones

And we can offer help until we go poor, however, war will still have money to maintain the pig, because the truth about war is that its ally is silence, it’s letting the blood paint the innocent before the guilty, is to forget the name of every soldier and civilian. 

It’s to dismiss catastrophes to the value of death, it’s to clean our hands by the distance of space and time, it’s to blame the country and not power. It’s not going to the front of a barrel of a gun and offering a flower to the bullet that should never bloom.

TA.

They dedicate 1 day of 1 month of 1 year, and we should be thankful with tears in our eyes. 

They give us epilators, brooms, washing machines, makeup, creams, and dresses, and we should get on our knees and thank as we ought to. 

They tell us that we deserve this acknowledgement from time to time, to remember how many of us are missing, to hear some of our protests, to get a pat on our backs, and we should bow to them. 

They are the church for which we are their pilgrims, in which we must be thankful that the Virgin Mary gets 1 day a year that gets forgotten with putting up the tree. We should be grateful because Joan of Arc wasn’t mad, she had epilepsy or schizophrenia and history misread her. And we should be grateful because Marie Curie’s husband took her credit because those were other times and what happened was that the man was the voice, not that he stole it. 

We should be thankful because we paint the name of every dead, missing, rapped, stolen and lost woman with blood in their walls, and they don’t erase it. We should be thankful that we had to paint South America in green to have a voice in the right of our bodies. We should be fucking thankful that in 365 days in the year there is 1 day where a child is told to give a rose to their mother because she is a woman, but we don't explain the weight of the word, so, yes, thank you. 

Thank you because I walk at night with eyes in every part of my body. 

Thank you because if there is a man with me in a small space my hands are fists and my teeth are swords. 

Thank you because with my sisters we say good night with a text telling us that we are home. 

Thank you because my sister taught me how to defend myself at six. 

Thank you because my legs are always close while yours push us off our seats

Thank you because in my awakening you grew in murder.

Thank you because my lips have been burned and abused by yours

Thank you for giving me 1 day in which we are billions of women that have voices and minds. 

Thank you for giving me this day because this is your way of telling me how terrified you are when the revolution comes for you.

TA.

You're screaming

When I'm really talking about how it hurts, how it bothers me, how it shows.

But still, I'm SCREAMING that I'm a woman and every day my body likes to remind me that I'm a walking clock. So they tell me that I’m HOWLING, so I better go with a ball in my mouth because men are close and never with not ever and impossible should they recognize the pain that is hidden in my body.

So I must ask in whispers if my butt looks okay, I must speak in tongue twisters and codes if anyone has an extra pocket in their purse to share. And I must speak in joys and congratulations when one claims to have a sister, and finally, I can unload the fatigue of once a month when I’m more than me.

And I scream because it's my biology, but it's daring of me to say, “What do I care? I am human, I am your equal, why should I be careful?” And they answer me with their finger on my lips because it is a grave secret that I must not show that we bow down to this torture that always turns me into strangers of jokes about broken porcelain dolls.

And I’m hysterical, tearful, sensitive, and crazy, but always silent because I should never say “Does it show?” In a voice that would make them realize that I am more than a sex object.

TA.

Let me be, I don't want to hide who I am, I don't want to ask if you can see what I should use for my health and comfort.

I don't want to speak in codes and names to say that it's those days again. I want to have the freedom to be a woman without them putting their fingers to my lips and telling me to shut up because that makes those with more delicate genes uncomfortable.

I want to be able to wear a skirt and shorts without stopping to think, do they see it? Do they see it? Do they see it?! as if it were the blood of a crime that it was never my desire to cause.

I want to be able to be in peace with tears and hysteria for days so that everything can pass, and I don't have to worry in fear of how to explain that: “Not today, not these days, not this week, give me time, I'm a body upside down, and I need a break without you pushing me into explanations that leave you making jokes that don't have my laugh.” And I want to be able to be happy and proud in my pain publicly.

I want to say the organs without them being a confession that not even the priest can hear, I want not to look for allies in those who have sisters and mothers and understand. I want my biology to be accepted like your abuse is accepted because How is this natural act taboo? I want not to have to lie every time I see blood and pretend to throw up.

I want them not to tell me to speak softly with gestures and signs so that only some can locate me, but not everyone understands why I’m a woman and how I must keep quiet and hidden how I feel once a month.

TA.