Nomadic Love

Our love was nomadic. When I wanted to stay, you left without even saying goodbye. When it was you who was looking for me, I was already on another continent. We were meant to glimpse shadows of who we used to be.

Maybe your photo is still in my drawer. Maybe I'm lying. Maybe I tore it with my teeth and burned it along with all the letters you never wrote to me – or maybe I lacked the courage to tear apart what was already so chewed by life.

I'm here, you're there. Not even in dreams we are together. There is something in our essences that fears that our love will turn to ashes. We are not friends, although we know each other better than many of those around us. We are not lovers, even if our hearts can play dancers. We are not enemies, we are not strangers. What are we? We are where we are not and it is in this impossibility that we become possible.

My scribbles are no longer the same. Remember when you asked me if that text was for you? The truth is you'll never know. My fragments beat like waves, and when they reach you, they have hit all ice shelves and are diluted by water – like the two of us, always destined to fail. If you were calm, you would realize that even in the imperfections of my features would be possible to find a picture of who we really were or who we could be.

Do not listen to my lies. All that I have written here is nothing more than illusions created to deceive you. The truth is that if I wrote that I ever loved you, you would use your hypnotic singing and would find a way to make the words turn against me. The words, those treacherous ones. Always letting me down when I need it most, with its ambivalences and limitations – like the two of us, right?

Now is the time when some reader appears and complains how much he can no longer read nonsense about us both. In another universe, you ask me not to let you die, no matter how many times you disappoint me or I continue to paint ourselves as the most unlikely couple in the real world – none of that matters, for our love still avenges itself in fiction. You ask me to carry you in the back, but my heart is already fatigued.

I prepare my backpack. I look at the bookcase full of books and I regret not being able to take them with me. I'm sorry for all the weight I'd like to leave behind – you and that pain that haunts me, like the ghost leg of a war survivor. You see, our battle is far from over. Every day that I think I've moved on,  in the blink of an eye, you pass through me.

Every writing seems the same. We're both trying to reinvent ourselves. This time I put on shoes that will no longer cause calluses on my walk, I do not need any marks to remind you anymore. I opened the map and I marked a country. I closed my eyes and hoped that we would not meet there.

“Was that you?”  you ask me.

I pretend I did not get your message. I pretend I did not see you. I pretend you did not see me. It is better this way, when our hearts are always traveling away from ourselves. Ah, these nomadic lovers… they never get tired. Maybe our paths intersect, maybe not. What about me? I'm already ready to set foot on the road again.