Do not speak to her in sentences. Speak to her in the smell of onions—that raw, stinging sweetness browning in the pan, a kitchen fog that is not food, but a memory of hunger. Tell her that when I comb my hair, I am actually feeling her fingers, those long, folded birds that nested over my hands. She was feeding me then. Not bread, but the soft, pale meat of the soul.

I must tell her: the things I love in myself are not mine. I am a theft of her. I am wearing her softness like a second skin that fits too tightly. Even in the silence of the bed, when the dark is heavy, I learn how to be “good.” It is a strange, vertical strength. It is the art of breaking oneself into small, edible pieces so that others may finally feel whole. To love is to be eaten, is it not?

My tears are a betrayal; they taste of her salt. I want to protect her, even from the shadow I cast. To protect her from the very “me” she created.

She is the thread. A thin, vibrating line that keeps my feet from floating away into the abyss. She taught me how to walk in the places where hands cannot be held—those hollow spaces of the world. At two in the morning, when I am lost and the “not-being” of things makes me cry, it is her voice that echoes. Not as words, but as a pulse. It brings me back to the center of my own breathing.

I saw the world through her eyes before I had my own; I stole her sight. Her hands are now at the ends of my arms, touching what I touch. She taught me the only thing worth knowing: that to be tender is a ferocity. It is the most dangerous kind of bravery.

Tell her I have changed. I have grown into a shape she might not recognize, yet I carry her like a secret organ. Until the end. And when the end comes, when I am no longer “I,” whatever remains—the dust, the light, the silence—will scream her name. It will shout her face into the unlistening universe.

It is a love that hurts to breathe.

©️ Beatriz Esmer