yes, you’re right: i knew. or maybe i hoped to know, was hoping for it. and secretly felt it, already. in you. like you in me, straight away, from the first picture word.
i also loved complete, with all of myself, in everything, and so much more than i thought and wanted to be able to. i also loved with the future and the past present in me, loved with open eyes, until the one that stole them from me blinded me fully by stopping to watch me.
so, yes, our loves were, still are, no matter what, alike in life, characters, disappointment. so alike....
alike now this emptiness of living lost in ourselves, broken and exhausted by the sting of the salt, in this labyrinth of skin and missing one so much, a labyrinth where we don’t know how to feel the way back to what we are anymore, what we were when, before. - how does one live happy without that completely shared life, loved in blood, water and giving?....
and this not knowing that there is nothing we can do to bring it back. and not knowing if, anymore, anyway...
and not to have something that would silence or bring some relief to the cruelty of them violating the places of our love – how could they, those places of everything we believed to be ours forever, even if, even now?... -, where we gave ourselves and were so much more than ordinary mortals, us, alive with love and future. nothing that stops the knife of pain of seeing them constantly imprisoned in images of another hands, another relief, in strength and feelings that are no longer born from the memories of our love, that is just abandoned, with nothing more, without even a break, one single moment of respect for the memory of what we lived and gave there, as if nothing, no one else in the world but us.
...
but one day - i promise it to you beyond these tears that my veins cry, in a body abandoned by itself - it will be ours, as well, the greater peace of living without their love. forever. as those who, now, without us.
i promise.
despite the pain in the black of the olives and the red of the poppies that pair.
i promise it to you. to us.
until then,
my friend of hidden face and feelings,
let us breathe.
( " help, i have done it again i have been here many times before hurt myself again today and the worst part is there's no-one else to blame
be my friend hold me, wrap me up unfold me i am small and needy warm me up and breathe me
ouch, i have lost myself again lost myself and i am nowhere else to be found, yeah, i think that i might break lost myself again and i feel unsafe
be my friend hold me, wrap me up unfold me i am small and needy warm me up and breathe me
be my friend hold me, wrap me up unfold me i am small and needy warm me up and breathe me " )
“ i have a friend that knows me beyond time. beyond everything. she has eyes like the sky, a smile with a baby's colour and life growing from her words. with her, for her, i chose, i re-learnt that life, the living life, that of giving and sharing, 14 years ago.
i have a friend that knows me beyond me. beyond all that. she looks me in the eyes and i know i can be true, i know i want to be life, i need to be me. with her, in her, pain and death are defeated. for her, the courage of life is reborn. ”
(lisboa, 18.07.07)
...
in the year of ’93, without knowing each other or knowing how close we were, already, how tangled our lives were becoming, flechinha and i lived similar feelings, incomparable of pain and shock, incomprehensible by all those who didn't suffer it, there, with us, teenagers hit with reality and adulthood, without possible warning or truce.
when we met, when we first spoke and smiled at each other with and in life, despite everything, it was a month to the day since that date that i will never hear or feel in an ordinary way, will never be mistaken with any other, will never be part of a normal calendar, as if they all came with defect, just like life, that one, all with that day marked in pain. i already had open wounds that i didn't understand but that burnt, tears that tasted of death, a kind of living i did not know how to live or feel. she lived the nightmare of the days that brought the uncertainty of the assurance of the fear of the tomorrow.
we licked wounds together, exchanged lives e memories of those days of despair and confusion, so many and many times, so many and more nights of words and tears and the sharing of everything we were, wanted to be, and what we didn't know was in us, as well. we were the doubt of the present holding on to the past, but we were together, step by step, in the direction of something that existed, should exist somewhere down the line - flechinha with all the love, strength and an almost stubborn refusal to see me giving up of whatever in me. because i, i sank in the non-predicted and unfair pain of someone who lived so much and wanted to live more. i wanted to sink in the days, to be a shadow, to be non-life. to refuse to live as a way of protest. and when i refused to leave lisbon because the body of, even if dead, lived here, condemned to rest here forever, when i said no to traveling to anywhere else that would take me from this city, that would take me away from the proximity of her body, for at least that – i believed – still existed, and it seemed so unfair, so terrible what i saw as abandonment, flechinha, in tenderness and unbreakable friendship, reached for me and pulled me to life. when no one else, for my own fault, could do it. for months in a row she was by my side, until i knew again how to have and live the weight of what i was in myself, no refuges, escapes or abandonment of me.
beyond the distance that life can and does bring, we knew how to have each other inside at all times, regardless of the distance outside, regardless of the worlds and walls between us: i knew, i always knew, that the moment i needed life would be there for me. because she.
when i emigrated, the comfort of knowing her in the same land. she that needed me, also, so much, but that despite that, when i admitted to her the crying, when fear and the weight of the weakness of missing home hurt me so, she would say to me “if you're not happy, if this way, here, you cannot have strength in happiness, go. go back. go back and be away from me, but stay close to what makes you strong and is part of you.” ... i stayed. with her strength in mine, as well. i stayed until i returned, returned until i stayed.
when the nightmare first began, last year, she wrapped up friendship as a present for me – she that could've had "de-humanized" herself, for all that, that year – and tried, the only (im)possible way, to protect me from the future she had already lived. she was with me, by my side, sitting on the chair that didn't exist, in that hospital room i'm not sure ever existed, either. morning to night, throughout the dawn, flechinha was with me in every instant of wait, anxiety and refusal of the tomorrow, so much and more than others, “close”... and never ever did she abandon me in myself. to her, just her, i admitted – in those days of unbearable nothing - the weakness under the weight i didn't want to admit to anyone else. even if. because. - i can’t take it anymore. how can i stop his suffering?, how does one live through this?...... and she, by my side, living it all with me, suffering with me, without ever, ever, letting go of my hand or my life.
...
and now, now, only yesterday, in the care and warmth of a house of so much and so beautiful love, flechinha and her half “inviting” me to be the godmother of the new branch on their tree of life.
...
and thus, by her hand, as so much more before, i become mother for the first time. and i can’t even begin to sdescribe the pride that brings tears to my voice and this smile of feeling so much to my eyes for being her child, come from that union of so much everything, that is so much to me, that makes me want to cry happy, me, a simple visit on that house of love. and i think, i know, it couldn’t be any other way. from anyone else, before.
because the strength, in her. the support. the example of courage. of not giving into what tries so hard to bend and break. the love, in her.
and now, on her hand, once again, life.
“ to close my eyes, raise my arms and tell her “i'm coming with you.”. this is clarity, melody. two hands holding. the inside and outside bits of an orange. (...) she stopped. she suddenly opened her eyes and understood. then, looking around, she thought: wherever you are, i thank you. i will never forget you. ”
(from the book you gave me almost 11 years ago...)
his eyes are the colour of a warm river. i look inside them - i dare to dive in without him knowing, or you, only me alone in his sea, with no other permission than the assurance that he loves me and wants me, inside -, and i see him, i know him, the little boy who wants to give me his hand, and love, and life.
from our life there aren't even photographs. that's what we chose, felt, did. with no photographs or witnesses, you and i alone in the divine and infinite love thought, believed, to be ours. the same whose mortality and humanity scared you off and made you hide from life. like we did with the photographs, once...
that's good. for the photographs would make everything a lot more difficult, more real, harder, now. this way it's like we had never gone beyond the dream.
and it's ok that you have images, memories in black and colour and white, of your other, first life, as much as, before me. us. it's ok...
he has baby eyes, the colour of summer. and shy words that call me to life.
and i don't mind knowing it was a lie, all a lie, we were never infinite, us, you and me. i wouldn't be with him like this, letting him sit close, come closer, so much more than you do, now and. because our love is over. as much as - you know it like i do - all the university, all of it, was on our side when.
his eyes are green. blue. clear and dark.
and the sea won't die if i don't hear your voice.
and the sun won't stop coming out with the day. everyday.
everything, everything exists, breathes, lives, without you.
life goes on without us.
as if.
as you.
as me, now.
to whom he tries to look inside, in eyes of a deep blue, liquid of tenderness and future.
(image: nude, looking over her right shoulder, by amadeo modigliani)
"they told me, heraclitus, they told me you were dead they brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. i wept as i remembered how often you and i had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
and now that thou art lying,my dear old carian guest, a handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest, still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake; for death, he taketh all, but them he cannot take. "
(william cory)
(everyday i wish more i'd have (re) met you before.
we've left that spiral of wanting and not wanting tomorrow to come.
we've left it somewhere, the eternity of the wait, standing - pins and needles across body and soul -, not knowing whether that tomorrow would come or if we were living it already.
forever.
now there is only the confused memory of that dead time that shadows our life and remembrances.
as if everything was just a bad dream - so indescribably bad... - that seems to have been and passed.
..
yes, that time has (now) passed...
we know it.
as much as never.
and it's returned to itself... time has returned to itself.
gently, secretly, ashamed of returning without you.
.
(first image: close-up clockwork, by konstantin inozemtsev. second image taken from www.kenora.net/watches/)
a new land, new people, smells paths looks words, meeting places, ways of being, spaces that will sow strength in me, touches of feeling and wisdom - all of it, all over again.
