Chelsea

You were seen by the windows. It was late at night.

Going through her pictures after so long suddenly made you empty and irrelevant. What would Chelsea think if she saw you today? She would love you anyway, but you would wake up at her presence to that old self you betrayed…not so long ago.

Her challenging eyes and mocking laugh would break these invisible chains. She’s your foreign country. She tells you: you are free. And freedom could take you places you’re afraid of being to.

But you can’t help it.

You are free.

What if you walked down the hall and ripped off these clothes and tore your hair and screamed, right now.
Glass-busting-loud: “I’m a fraud”.

“Let me go, I’m a fraud”.

Homesick

Somewhere, someone.
But not here. Too dreamlike, it would be. If he showed up in the middle of the night, like he used to, and you watched him coming from the living room window. The streets silent to his feet, his steps, a promise.

If anyone ever learned how to love without loss.
Or fear of loss.

You would open the door and he would come in with that mischievous smile of his, grabbing your waist and stopping your heart. An assault. When you most needed violence. Shaking up your world like a couple of dice in a pot. You can’t remember last time you felt that alive: you haven’t.

All the pains ever sang.
Tired of wilderness: you wanna be tamed. You’re asking for it, and it’s just that you want to believe he’s the only one who can deliver.
Now a calendar sleeps in your chest. A beast, a lion.
Time and space as enemies.
You beg to make sense. You search for it without hope.
There’s an ocean and there’s cash and tv and passports and credit fucking cards. But if only there was a winter to put your soul to rest.
While you wait.
If only.
Nothing will diminish this: he’s your house, he’s your home.
And you’ve been hopelessly homesick.

Real Love

Comfort

It’s 2 am in the big city. You had a shower when you got home from university, you took a nap. Now you just woke up and can’t sleep anymore.

The room is lit only by the stray city lights coming from the windows. You get up and sit on the corner of the bed for a while. Mess up your hair with your right hand trying to think of something.
You think of nothing.

You find a sweatshirt on the floor. You wear it. There’s a pack of cigarettes on its pocket. You walk slowly to the balcony and open the windows: the sky is brown with clouds. The air is wet. It’s been raining all day
but now it stopped.
The 12th floor.
For a moment, you close your eyes, light a cigarette and breath in the fumes. The world in slow motion like in a half-awake dream. Opening your eyes again, you let the smoke go through your lips. She told you why it’s so relaxing: ’cause it’s only when you’re smoking that you ever breath so deeply.

Leaning against the glass you watch the trembling city lights scattered amidst the darkness.

Constellations of loneliness.

Oversensitive to temperatures, the slightest breeze makes you cold.

She said something about stars, and the universe, and faith. You can’t remember exactly what.

It doesn’t mater now she’s gone.

Mother

She collects soaps and little souvenirs from hotel rooms.
She’s obsessed with linen in the same manner Manhattan girls are obsessed with shoes.
Whenever she wants to eat something greasy or sweet, she tries to convince everyone to eat it with her so she doesn’t feel too guilty.
She’s overweight. But not too much.
Some people have some sort of connection with an animal. Her sister in law, for example, has a little owl collection on display in the living room: there are wood owls and crystal owls and stained glass owls and stone owls.
Hers is with chickens. There are chicken objects and prints all over the place. She had the patience to count it once: 32. There’s even a rooster. It’s big and it’s in the kitchen. She really likes it, but for obscure reasons and not for its obvious kitsch statement.
She loves vintage perfume. That is, perfumes that were famous in the 70’s, like Paco Rabanne’s Calandre or Cacharel’s Anaïs Anaïs, her favourite. It smells of white roses.
She hates the comedy shows on TV.
There’s a little scar on her chin. It’s from a big mole she removed some twenty years ago.
She reads self-help books.
She knows how to cook but doesn’t like it.
She prays everyday, like her mother and sister, and takes at least two showers.
In her closet, everything is extremely organized. She puts some of the hotel soaps in her underwear and sock drawers and in between sheets and blankets, so they always smell nice.