When I get home, I think about the object I chose for my enjoyment, even though the battery has been dead for a while; I haven't even used it for three days since I bought it. Sexuality and self-exploration are rituals I don't want to let fall into decline.

There are also coaches out there selling spells to manifest abundance and make healthy financial decisions while you do sit-ups. However, behind that choreographed display of control, chance, with its ever-present smile, is waiting for you to slip up so it can turn your life upside down.

Scientists estimate that the end of the world will occur in about six to eight billion years, but by then humanity will have been extinct for about two to three billion years.

Me encontró refugiada debajo de un coche tras la tormenta. Lanzaba mordidas y rasguños a la mano que intentaba alimentarme. Me levantó del suelo con una cobija mientras yo, temblorosa, me deshacía en manotazos y zarpadas intentando proteger mis heridas del roce de la manta.

Every day, decide what to have for breakfast. Whether to shower before going out or wait until the evening. Pack lunch or buy something elsewhere. Exercising our free will in every decision, not just letting it be. Thinking about the many or few consequences of each "yes," each "no."

And it's not that I need you every day or all the time, it's sometimes: when it's cold, when I'm alone, when I'm sad, when I have to go to faraway places and when I'm making plans for the future.

I've always liked lying on my stomach with my right leg bent and pointing toward the wall. My bed is a soft rectangle about my size that has been tucked into the right corner of the room since childhood. There's no place in the world where I feel more unsafe.

I'm untouchable now. No one can hurt me. After feeling so much, to feel nothing at all... it's strange. Don't buy me a drink. Don't dedicate songs to me. Don't write me poems or send me messages or flowers. I'm not interested. You're wasting your time.

My entire skin resisted, with the aversion of someone who violates their nature, but I had no choice and I gathered my courage, because to reach my head it had to seep through every pore of my abandoned skin.

With the stories badly told, the maps badly folded, and the lights less bright. But I wanted to meet you, to taste you, to remove the blindfold that covered me, the prejudices that invaded me. The flirting began, I finally met you.

A couple of days ago, while driving home, I thought that, for me, reality hit me for the first time when my father died. At that moment, on the ground of life, I didn't know what to do. Writing, then, couldn't protect me.

I don't think I should have agreed to let you talk to me, because ever since we broke up, I've been avoiding the subject and haven't had time to think about everything that happened. It may seem like a lie, but I'm really so full of other people's things.

I don't know when it happened. One day I woke up and my back started to hurt. The moans escaped me more and more frequently; when I got out of bed, things on the floor seemed unreachable. I began to lose muscle mass, and my hair turned gray and thinned.

We woke up next to each other; a pair of broken souls whose spark had lit up the night and who now, defeated by the dawn, wished they were anywhere but this sordid hotel room.

The wretch keeps telling me the same thing. He walks down the street with his two hands empty, busying himself with other people's chores. The words fall from his mouth. My chest: two fractions of anxiety. I laugh, needing to snuggle up in a plush blanket.

I opened all the windows. The gusts snatched away the last drop that was trickling down my zygomatic. I looked for something to raise my eyes again. I'm more dangerous when I miss something. And yet, missing: the fingers of longing pressed against my chest.

I hold on to all of that so I don't have to run out to find you. I tie up that part of myself and throw it in a room, lock the door, so that impulse doesn't win. I repeat "no" countless times when I think about what would have happened.

Confession number five: One of the last days, I arrived and the place was empty. I could sit wherever I wanted. And without thinking, I sat next to you, where I always did. That's when I knew that, after all, this was still my place. My comfort zone. My refuge.

Juntos somos invencibles. Tal vez tú siempre lo hayas sido. Pero yo, que jamás lo había sentido, ahora lo entiendo. No importa cuánto dolor hayamos experimentado. Ni cuántas veces hayamos caído.

Yo era como Ícaro, tú eras el sol.

You follow a strict set of rules. I still can’t tell what your fuel is. You have an agenda for your emotions. You say you want peace. But you’re at war with yourself and you are our worst enemy.

He pensado en todas las veces que dijiste “me vas a extrañar” mientras rechinabas los dientes, entrecerrabas los ojos y me mirabas como si yo en realidad fuera incapaz de sentir el vacío constante si me dejaras sin tu presencia.

A veces, basta pensarte para sostener tu sombra en mi memoria: nombrarte sin voz, con el gesto apenas de un recuerdo, como si el pensamiento fuera un puente sobre tu abismo. Y si no te alcanzo, al menos, te acompaño desde el borde.

Es 20 de abril. Mi teléfono no suena. Ni falta que hace. El bar huele a cloro y derrotas ajenas. El cantinero —morro de veinte— me sirve Matusalén blanco (cristalino, como las promesas que nunca cumplí). —¿Otro? —pregunta. Asiento. Él remata: —Nel. Aquí hasta los fantasmas pagan cover.

Cuando se enciende la noche y nadie atestigua su ternura, se acopla sigiloso a tu costado, te roza con falanges delicadas te besa de nariz y de mejilla. Nunca nadie te lo dijo: libres y domésticos, nocturnos y furtivos, insalvables, los gatos aman en silencio.

And in an intimate coffee, with a sad look, I approach your soul. Full of kisses and passions, I give myself to you and to the wind. Take me, I am yours. Submerge your sorrows, channel my desires, create an abyss and in that abyss, my suffering.

Lo más seguro es que al terminar de leerlo ustedes terminarán con la sensación de que han conocido a un amigo, que te ha presentado a muchos otros entrañables seres humanos. Y terminen como yo, disfrutando la memoria de haberles visitado y conocido a través del poderoso y necesario acto de poner atención, imaginar y…

Marcha hacia la muerte. Dedicándose a la gestación de una nueva vida. Embarazo imaginario. En secreto, se abandona en un sillón y, olvidada de nosotros, se sonríe a sí misma. Mira al trasluz, con el júbilo callado con que los niños descubren las maravillas de la tierra.

Odio tener insomnio, pero también dormir. Dormimos mucho. Demasiado. Alguna vez leí que pasamos ciento veinte días al año durmiendo. Es difícil no sentir que perdemos algo. Si el sueño fuera opcional, lo evitaría la mayor parte del tiempo. Dormiría para soñar.

A veces también me cuestiono qué hizo con el video que me tomó dentro del auto, de noche. Supongo que salió lindo. Muchas de las veces que pienso en él, pienso también en todo lo que me enseñó, en que me hubiese gustado tener más tiempo.