Well, it is hard at first. He dumps you, and you still have to keep on breathing. It seems terrible, you know, like the end of the world. For the first two or three days. Then it gets better. You start to go out with your friends, you party, you flirt with some random guy in a bar, you feel a woman again. And that's all it takes. Your self-steem is more important than I guy who, let's be honest at this point, sure as hell doesn't deserve you. If he dumps you, well, fuck off. Keep breathing, keep dancing, keep kissing, keep fucking. Keep living. People who really and truly love you will stay in your life no matter what. That's the truth. And if they can make it through, well, maybe you're just better of on your own. The thing is, we girls are always trying to figure out why, always worrying, always wondering what the fuck we did wrong, when, the fact is, we didn't do anything wrong, they were just too coward to stay, or too liars to tell us the truth: that they didn't love us enough. But forgive them, most of the time they don't have a fuckin' idea of what are they doing, and if they think they can do better, they're completely wrong. If your ex-boyfriend can take the risk of being without you, believe me, you can take that risk too. Because I'm sure you're gonna find someone that will make all the crap worth it, and maybe, some day, when he's sittin', drinkin' with his friends, he'll realize what an idiot he was when he let you go. You're the most beautiful flower ever. If he didn't know how to water you, that's his fault, not yours. So bloom, little sweetheart, bloom, and don't be afraid of what life has waiting for you.

It's rainin' again.
I feel like the world is tryin' to tell me something,
but everything is full of noise.
I'm pretendin' I'm okay.
I don't want them to start makin' stupid questions.
Everybody always asks stupid questions.
Are you fine?
Of course not you idiot,
my life is a fuckin' mess,
I'm losin' weight
'cause I can't eat properly
and the anxiety I feel is makin' me sick.
Instead of that,
I choose to answer: yes, I'm fine,
and I nod slightly.
Lyin' is so easy it freaks me out sometimes.

It's rainin' again.
I feel like runnin'.
I want to escape all this crap around.
But I can't,
and instead I start to read "A brief history of time"
and it makes my head so dizzy I'm not even able
to think of you.
It helps, you know.

When chocolate doesn't improve them
it means things are gettin' hard.
And weird.
And akward.
And I don't like them that way.
Shhhhh,
don't talk.
I can't hear the music.

Remember when Alicia falls into the rabbit-hole?

I like that song.
And I like the way I dance that song.
You see, it gets better when I dance.
Loads better.

Time stops,
everything fills up with smoke,
light hits the skin
and the heart starts poundin'.
Bare feet,
trembling,
feelin' the heat.


It smells like rebirth,
like a second chance.

Respeta las canas,
los años,
las heridas.
Los golpes a un corazón
que intuye que se acerca
el último latido
[el último, el último]
antes de romperse del todo.
CRACK.

Llueve en mis ojos,
pero el mar está en calma.
La vida se paró de golpe
y dejó la atmósfera llena de ozono y melancolía.

Ciérrame la puerta,
vamos,
ciérramela.
Te prometo que no volveré
a llamar(te).

Te encontré entre la mierda,
brillando sin remedio
en un océano de oscuridad.
Entonces creí que la vida sería
buena conmigo.

Ahora que te has ido,
ahora que no estás,
siento que hay oscuridades
que están destinadas
a permanecer eternamente,
día tras día,
noche tras noche,
hasta el fin de la humanidad.

[pero la oscuridad,
para mí,
siempre fue la mejor parte.]

Apaga la luz,
ven,
siéntate conmigo.
Hagamos de este momento
todo lo que no será.

my storm.

I’m thinkin’ of you.
It’s weird but I kinda like it.
It feels like spring again.

You’re full of everything.
I can’t reach the magnitude of your smile.
You’re impossible,
they’d say,
and I know they’re right.
But the way your eyes shine in the darkness
of the night
makes me forget about all the rules I cannot break.

Be my storm,
the tattoo of a kiss that was never meant to be.

supongo que mentía.
como todos.

cierro el corazón hasta nuevo aviso.
o para siempre.
aún no lo sé.

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

“You Should Date An Illiterate Girl,” by Charles Warnke

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

A veces te tropiezas con tu lado bueno, con esos polvos mágicos que lanza la Campanilla que de vez en cuando te ronda el hombro derecho. A veces, sí, a veces conectas con el lado tierno. Como ahora, con la ventana abierta, la oscuridad trepando, la noche sevillana haciéndome soñar, esa melodía sonando flojito, y yo dando vueltas en medio del salón. Qué paranoia tan bonita. Hoy he vuelto a salir con la cámara a inmortalizar pedazos de esta gitana que me tiene enamorá y se me ha agarrao a las entrañas. Y es que cuando empieza la cuenta atrás te das cuenta de que de repente tienes prisa, de que estás en medio de una rayuela saltando de número en número intentando no caer, mientras dibujas con tiza esa línea prohibida que rozas de nuevo. Me perdí en tus calles y me encontré con una parte de mí que intuía que existía, pero que nunca me atreví a intentar tocar. Todavía no sé cómo contárselo a mi padre. El reflejo de Triana, y mi corazón acelarándose. La vida a veces es sólo bailar.

Hay colores que no se olvidan, miradas que queman el alma, canciones que son cometas y paisajes que curan hasta las heridas más incautas. Créeme, siempre hay un lugar para cambiar de piel.

Cuando me vaya echaré de menos las naranjas.
Y a ti,
a ti te voy a querer siempre.

'Y tal vez, no te marches nunca más.'

El mundo se caía y yo veía ojos negros por doquier. La vida estaba de luto. Hubo guerras sangrientas en tiempos pasados, lágrimas que cayeron al polvo dejando rastros de luz, miradas inertes que no consiguieron salvarse, corazones latiendo en medio del desastre. Sentí cada puñal atrevesándome la vida. Como si ya no quedara nada más de mí, como si ya no fuera nada. Intenté respirar ese aire viciado, intenté redimirme de mis pecados. Dejé mi sangre como prenda e intenté salir corriendo, a ninguna parte, a ningún mañana. Sobreviví a huracanes, a arenas movedizas, a camas vacías que no olían a nadie. Me enfrenté a dragones, a domingos sin llamadas, a miradas sin amor que intentaban acabar conmigo. Me di de bruces contra mil muros, contra mil bocas que sólo escupían mentiras, contra mil amaneceres sin nombre, contra corazones pintados de negro incapaces de querer, incapaces de quererme. Y nada, absolutamente nada de eso fue peor que tu sonrisa. Te vi sonreír y el mundo se paró, las estrellas se apagaron y ya no hubo esperanza. Ese día supe que tú ibas a matarme. Ese día supe cómo iba a morir.

Zorionak.

Por el 28,

por la primera vez que respiraste,

porque empezaste a existir,

por cada año que has recorrido hasta aquí,

por tus veinticinco,

porque sean increíbles,

por habernos encontrado,

porque la vida nos diera otra oportunidad,

por aprender a querernos así,

por el ocho,

por nuestro infinito,

por todas tus gilipolleces,

por las mías,

por las carcajadas,

las locuras,

por las noches,

por los viajes,

por tus gritos en mi moto,

por nuestras idas de olla,

por las miradas,

los abrazos,

por la capacidad que tenemos de leernos la mente,

por las veces que me has levantado,

por las veces que me has salvado,

por llenarlo todo de colores,

por darme el aire,

la luz,

la vida,

por tu magia,

por ser tan especial,

por tu fortaleza,

tu paciencia,

por estar siempre a mi lado,

por no fallarme nunca.

Por ti,

por mí,

por nosotras.

Por todo lo que nos queda por vivir juntas.

Porque no me faltes nunca.

Porque por ti mato y remato

y hago lo que sea.

Porque eres mi familia.

Y lo que te pasa a ti me pasa a mí.

Y si tú estás mal yo estoy mal.

Porque quiero hacer que sonrías para siempre,

no separarme de tu lado,

no fallarte nunca,

y hacer que lo malo sea menos malo,

y que lo bueno sea cojonudo.

No concibo el mundo sin ti.

Y este año que hemos estado una a 800 kilómetros de la otra,

nos ha valido a las dos

para saber que con nosotras

la distancia no cuenta.

Eres tan tan tan bonita

por fuera y por dentro

que sólo puedo agradecer

al universo que nos

haya hecho coincidir.

No te acabes nunca, sister.

Eres mi mitad.

ZORIONAK MAITI,

eres de colores.

She was the flower that everyone wanted in their garden. Damn, I'm not gonna let her leave. Never.