So this is missing

I think of you and an emptiness invades inside me; is missing someone, people say.

I remember your aesthetic smile, resembling a few vertical rectangles formed in a row, symmetrical, almost so perfect that they would provoke fear if it weren't for the ordinary stains that you got from the coffee...the one you drink in the morning in an addictive urge to feel comforted.

We met in a cafe of mermaids and popular people, next to an elegant gazebo in a city that is not very elegant.

I search every corner of my inner self and after a few decades in - the - world, there is no trace of any feeling similar to the one that landed in my stomach after we said goodbye for the first time.. After embracing each other and not wanting to let go of each other's hands as in an anxious and desperate act to keep a little of that tender and welcoming grip.

Your voice seemed like a memory book I had never opened but was about to recognize. Your eyes, the pure and noble look, the best reflection of what we both knew was happening.

“We're the same color,” you said. And even if we weren't I wouldn't mind forever sharing a little of mine with you.

But your champagne color, bubbly, the one that woke me up with laughter at dawn, was extinguished in a lonely night. The smile after a good fuck stopped looking like a bright crescent, rather, it became straight, almost hostile.

On my back there is only that cold space that you replaced with your arms.

The bed seemed to grow wider, the gulf widened between you and me, me and you and the evenings together on your couch.

I miss you and it's hard to accept it, for there isn't a moment of the day when my mind doesn't reel in a disappointing dance remembering your warm hands around my waist. Squeezing and releasing as if trying to take a little bit more of me each time.

On my back the cold consumes me.

I want to sleep, sleep, sleep, because it is essential to dream of you when you are not around to feel that you are not gone. And between dreams, from time to time and between breaths of air, a sigh escapes me; you know those that carry a name and make you feel alive. The dazzle subsides when I wake up and only your memory remains; shit again that gap.

I miss our legs tied between knots, holes and fabrics. Your bare feet, pink, on the table.

I miss lying on your chest while I listened to every beat of your body in a unison tone of blood running through intense gall. And yes, I knew what would happen.

And here I am standing in a world where you are no longer there. Staring straight ahead and thinking about what the future holds. And even there, with the future shining and waiting, I am unable to take a single step forward.

Photographers: Tiago Almança