It is not a stain, this needing. It is the salt. To hunger for the touch of another is not a frailty of the spirit, it is the very pulse of the beast within us, the one that breathes and does not know why. You crave a kindness in the morning? That is not the whim of a child; it is the soul’s primary cry, the raw, unwashed demand of the flesh for its own reflection.

Do not be deceived: seeking a smile does not mean your world is gray. It means you have tasted the sun and refuse to forget it. And the hug, the vertical alignment of two solitudes, does not mean you cannot stand. It means that, for a moment, you choose not to be a monument. You are not a fragment, not a broken shard of a mirror. Even a village is not enough to fill the void, because to live is precisely that: to be an open mouth, a hollow reed, a perpetual yearning.

Dreams are not an escape; they are the terrifying sight of the possible. To love is to see the world not as it is, but in the violent, beautiful colors of its own becoming. It is to find the exit in a wall that others call a dead end.

So, let the desire come. Let it overflow. Do not let your voice tremble as if you are asking for permission to exist. Speak your hunger. The soul has its own savage melody, and to stifle it is the only true death.

To exist is to be incomplete. And oh, how magnificent it is, this agonizing fullness of wanting.

©️Beatriz Esmer