You knew, didn’t you? You knew from the very beginning that my heart was not a house, but a haunting. It is a frightening thing to look at someone and see their ruins, yet you did not turn away. Instead, you made a home out of it anyway. You did not ask for repairs; you simply walked inside the dark. You sat near the dying fire of my existence and fed it with your passion, until you became something physical—a searing sensation burning through my veins, an ache that finally felt alive. Your presence, so quiet and yet so absolute, silenced the horrors that used to stalk my ventricular corridors. For the first time, the breathing in the dark was only yours.

With its cracked walls and a leaky roof, you looked around this interior geography and wondered. How could I live in such a fragile, delicate place? How could anyone survive so exposed, so brutally vulnerable to the cruelties of this world?

The truth is, many visit. People are drawn to ruins; they like to look at the wreckage from a safe distance. But none ever keep it. None attempt to protect it. They want the warmth of a hearth, but they run from the smoke.

But you. You did not run. You said my ghosts told you the story of how I became who I am. You listened to the architecture of my grief. And you love me—not despite the shattered pieces, but because I showed you the wounds to help you understand. To expose a wound is to say: Look, this is where I am human.

And now, something miraculous has happened in the quietest corners of our being. Our angels and demons have met in the hallways, and they have become friends. We no longer have to hide our shadows from one another. We are equal now, beautifully and tragically equal, in our daily struggles. We are two solitudes that touch, protect, and greet each other.

© Beatriz Esmer