I gave up everything I could have built for you, because your memory terrified me at night and your face came to me when I kissed someone else’s, because, once again, it wasn’t fair to miss you so much. I allowed myself to wake up sore, bruised, tired, with the heaviness of someone who doesn’t know whether they did the right thing or betrayed themselves. Because I am tired of finding tenderness where there is only cruelty: the selfishness of someone who does not know how to love and also does not allow themselves to be loved.
Nothing arrives until after seeing you, after hearing you and watching you speak, after analyzing every part of your back, your hands, the urge to cry that overwhelms me when I remember every part of you, every second we have spent together. Why do you try so hard to pretend that we know nothing about each other and, when we fall silent, you magically remember all the secrets I have told you? Why do you keep asking what it is that makes me so sad? I still don’t understand what overwhelms you, where that sadness that calls to me comes from—the same sadness that binds us—where your desperation not to lose me comes from, knowing full well that you are not mine.
I didn’t allow myself to notice how bad things were until it was already too late and, unconsciously, I whispered for you to come back, like someone asking the sky for proof that they are on the right path. I dared to say your name, like someone calling for something that belongs to them—in diminutive, in whispers, with affection, out loud. I spoke to you while my fingers ran through your hair; I looked at you, I held you, and the tenderness in your voice made me feel as if I understood everything. But from a distance, later, I realized that none of it was true. I dared to believe in the judgment of others; I dared to ask and to fall in love with the answer. I allowed myself to wither in times of drought, when your words were not constant, and I stretched out my hands to see if I could reach a little of your attention, like someone searching for something in a drawer that has been stirred up over time, knowing they will never find it. I gave up, aware that there is no us and that you only take pleasure in someone being more miserable than you. I stopped looking for answers, but I never stopped thinking about you.
Photography by Sofía Alonzo // Dev/Scan at La Periferia Film Lab
Video art, scriptwriting, production design, urban art, sad texts. Sometimes Sadnenita, sometimes nothing at all.