43- In love
**Wednesday, April 10**
**My Flaca:** Hello?
**My romantic lyrics:** Hi.
**My Flaca:** You’re so beautiful—
**My romantic lyrics:** Not more than you.
**My Flaca:** How are you?
**My romantic lyrics:** In love with you.
**My Flaca:** Wow, that’s intense.
**My Flaca:** You made me blush.
**My romantic lyrics:** Do you feel the same?
**My Flaca:** Yes!
**My romantic lyrics:** Tell me exactly, I need to know.
**My Flaca:** I’m in love with you too. I love you.
**My Flaca:** And now that you know exactly, what happens?
**My romantic lyrics:** What happens is that I feel you’re mine.
**My romantic lyrics:** And I feel like I’m yours.
**My Flaca:** I’m yours, and you’re mine.
**My romantic lyrics:** What happens is that you’re a super beautiful woman, and I’m grateful to fate for putting you on my path.
**My Flaca:** Fate...
**My romantic lyrics:** Yes...
**My romantic lyrics:** Wow, what a beautiful woman you are!
**My romantic lyrics:** I think of you, I dream of you.
**My Flaca:** I want to kiss you.
**My Flaca:** Thank God you’re real.
**My romantic lyrics:** Have I told you that without you I would be like a ship anchored in the open sea?
**My Flaca:** I could be your mermaid—
**My romantic lyrics:** According to the story, mermaids are bad.
**My romantic lyrics:** I’d rather have you with me!
**My Flaca:** I would never be bad to you. Maybe I’d torture you a little... a lot? But I wouldn’t dare to harm you.
**My romantic lyrics:** I’d love you with your beauty and your voice! And I would never want to return to land, I’d stay in the sea with you.
**My Flaca:** Yes! I like that idea!
**My Flaca:** Can I kiss you? I’ve never kissed a woman... I’d touch your skin and your hair.
**My romantic lyrics:** No! That would be terrible...
**My romantic lyrics:** Mermaids don’t kiss.
**My Flaca:** Seriously?
**My romantic lyrics:** Yes, they only enchant people until they drive them crazy.
**My Flaca:** :(
**My Flaca:** But how am I going to drive you crazy if I can’t kiss you? And how do you know so much about mermaids?
**My romantic lyrics:** I like those mystical things, plus, can I confess something to you?
**My Flaca:** Yes.
**My romantic lyrics:** I survived a mermaid.
**My Flaca:** Seriously?
**My romantic lyrics:** Yes, instead of driving me crazy until she killed me, she went crazy until she loved me.
**My romantic lyrics:** And now she’s my enchanted mermaid.
**My Flaca:** For a second I was about to believe that mermaids existed.
**My romantic lyrics:** You are that mermaid; mermaids exist.
**My Flaca:** I’m your mermaid, but I can’t kiss you.
**My romantic lyrics:** Yes, you can kiss me... you renounced your charms, and now you’re under mine.
**My Flaca:** Alright.
**My Flaca:** I love you.
**My romantic lyrics:** And I love you, beautiful. I couldn’t go on with my days if I lost you.
**My Flaca:** You’re not going to lose me, my love, and if one day you lose me, nothing against your pride, come find me in the ocean.
**My romantic lyrics:** Alright, I’ll do it.
**My Flaca:** We could live under the sea, it would be very beautiful; I’d show you all the marine wonders I still don’t know and discover all the beauty of the world with you.
**My Flaca:** And if one night we fight, you can sleep on your boat, and I’d take care of you and protect you from pirates.
**My Flaca:** Jumu.u
**My romantic lyrics:** Hahahaha
**My romantic lyrics:** I’d prefer to live in the sea with you. The pirates don’t go there; only you do.
**My romantic lyrics:** I love you.
**My Flaca:** I love you too.
Many times what I needed was to spend ten minutes with the hands of the clock stopped while we talked about our likes, discovering something new about her, insignificant, like a new mole appearing on her cheek. Reminding her of the reasons I loved her, inventing possible ways we could have met in another life, loving her, loving her to the bones.
If I imagine it, I’d bring her breakfast in bed every Sunday, that bed that would have seen us eat each other alive so many times. Freshly toasted bread and freshly squeezed juice, all very recent, like her hands that caress my life after breakfast, making me vulnerable and making me nonexistent. We’d fit together wildly when making love, and I’d grab her arm to stop her in the middle of the street and take a dandelion flower from her hair because I’d know she has already come true for me. Sometimes when she asked me to accompany her to take her bath, I’d sit and watch her all naked and think of the most romantic way to tell her I loved her, until I found the perfect way while we made love in the shower. We’d whisper the stories of our failures to each other, and we’d cry at the end if necessary to try again. As the years passed, we’d sit on every bench in the city on Sundays to listen to the first song of the birds at dawn while I hide my cold hands on her belly under her knitted sweater and her warm hat. I truly believe that this first song would always be different just like the bird that sings it. She’d teach me all the types of birds there are, and I’d tell her the meaning of flowers every time I gave her a sunflower, decorated her hair with an orchid or turned her back into a dandelion.
We’d cook. Sometimes she’d be sweeter, other times saltier, but always over low heat. She’d help me prepare the tastiest dishes, and the wine would help me. We’d fight and reconcile because that’s how we are, and in the end, we’d only grow stronger together. I’d end up convincing myself that I loved her more after a fight when her warm lips would arrive, capable of sucking up all the usual emptiness of Sundays. I’d write novels and hundreds of poems about her, literature scholars would go crazy searching for that perfect muse, and I, with the midday sun at zenith, would make love to her asking if I could give her a kiss “there.” I’d go to the beach while she strolls with me among my favorite characters under a canopy; she wouldn’t be Vladimir’s Lolita or Cortázar’s Maga, she would be my muse, the one who would take me to life and death passing through madness just by having her in my arms. She’d take me to buy books, and I’d end up making love to her after reading García Montero aloud, waking up to a “princess” and stealing the nighttime calm from the neighbors. I loved every contradiction and every smile of hers.
I’d stay in all the seasons and protect her from everything and nothing; she would also be my princess, the one who escaped from a book of poems by Bécquer and became reality. We’d share dessert, ice cream with strawberries, tiramisu, or those pineapple yogurts she used to buy for me, we’d travel together without leaving the sofa. I’d prepare herbal infusions, carrot cookies, and flan thinking, “God, I hope she likes them” while she sits watching her favorite American Idol show and immerses herself in Nicki Minaj, I wouldn’t mind because in the end, the one who would make love to her all night would be me. I’d take advantage of every commercial to kiss her between smiles. And the world would be different under the blankets; there I could make her mine and touch the sky by kissing a misplaced mole, hidden among so many galaxies.