49- Mercy
I went into the bathroom and looked at my face framed in the mirror, I snooped at my nose, the positive thing about ripping it off now was that if it started to bleed and I broke a small vessel in my nose, Melissa could cure me, she's a doctor nothing bad would ever happen to me at her side. And the best part was that knowing that she had a crush on me wouldn't embarrass me having to confess that I was picking my nose looking for snot; nor would I be shocked at the idea of her looking at me with a face full of blood, not attractive, no matter the circumstances you find yourself in. I opted to leave the scab on my nose until I could shake it off and I took the opportunity to wash my face and brush my teeth. I tied my hair up in a bun with a bracelet that I had bought for Paola years ago and wore on my wrist. I turned off the bathroom light, went into the hallway, and grabbed a pen and a notebook that was on the counter by the phone.
I went to the kitchen and filled my mug with latte, it was the mug I always drank coffee out of at Mel's apartment. It was once Paola's mug, Paola used to leave it in the office to use when I went to work. It had two kittens printed on it, and one of the kittens was blonde and was hugging a black cat by the neck. When we broke up, Paola told me she couldn't bear to use that mug again, so she had left it with me. My mug was similar, except one of the kittens was biting the other by the neck. I poured my espresso into Paola's old mug, sweetened it with two cinnamon sticks, and went back to the balcony. Ready to write, I sat wrapped in a warm, soft duvet in the corner of the balcony, feeling the icy breeze tickle my cheeks. I took the pen and the blank page of the notebook.
“When someone has the courage to bare your soul and undress your wounds, your fears, your routines. When someone knows that you are broken because of them and they don’t mind breaking themselves to heal you. When someone stays with you even when you yourself had left you, for not being able to love yourself among so many ruins. Now I am the echo of the uncertainty that couldn’t tell if it was me who created the answers, without knowing how many questions were clarified on your lips. If I could make sense of all the chaos that takes my breath away when I try to use my lungs to breathe your skin. The subtlety of never shouting what you told me when you took your fingers off of me and breaking the metaphors that we still had to live, the ones that were never born when we felt each other. Now I lack the calm of traveling between your hands, without knowing that the world was turning while I still didn’t understand chords and kilometers. Now I forget the sanity of writing breathing for two parallel lives, and the madness of believing that I could live if I stopped doing it. Now I forget the sweet routine of touching your body with my soul still asleep, hearing the sound of your voice on the phone as if you were singing me a lullaby and impregnating my auditory memory with your ringtone, after your heartbeat saved my life. Now I remember how much I liked to look in the mirror and see your face resting on my shoulders, as you hug me from behind every time I look in the mirror. Now I remember your smile spreading like one of those butterflies that Neruda loved so much, seeing you smiling at me and complimenting me on my body, my eyes, and my new and favorite dress. Any dress that you came to take off of me later. Will I always miss you in this unbearable way? Will I see your face even in the absence that your name leaves when I don't say it?
I always miss you Paola, but when I really feel like you, I usually turn to my hands, either to masturbate my soul from other hands far from yours, or to find you cornered between words inside me. And I confess that my hands don't always end up writing to you, or painting you, or hurriedly writing any email that will soon go to your drafts tray like everything you deleted from my insides. But I can't stop writing to you, and I don't want to stop loving you."
I took a sip of my coffee with my gaze lost in the bright stars of the sky. My mind was sailing in the depths of the subconscious, no one had to know that I felt so incomplete. No one, everything I wrote would be my secret.
Mel walked to the balcony and, feeling my heart skip a beat, hugged me from behind. - You've been writing for two hours - She pointed, observing what I was writing. I hid it from her sight. I stood up with a start and turned around, fitting myself in her waist. I pressed her against the glass door and kissed her passionately until I hid deep inside the guilt of writing to Paola kissing her.
\- And how long have you been watching me? - I whispered.