I want you for what you are – but even more for what you make me be.
And feel, above all what you make me feel, I watch you as you sleep, the way you move, your skin in search of mine, and I believe that’s the only way I am, the thing that concerns itself with the way you lie, with the smell of your skin, with the so-small space that the two of us together occupy in the bed, there might even be sex, of course, but the space where we are is the space where the best thing that I know happens, loving like this might not even be healthy but it does me so much good.
I wake up with you like somebody who wakes up to heaven.
It doesn’t matter what the day’s going to be like, what the hell I’m going to have to put up with, what I’m going to have to do to make life happen again, there are so many things to hurt us, so many tears we know we cannot defeat, but it doesn’t matter what’s coming down the track if at the end of it all there’s the night and you, our bed, stretching my body out and hearing you breathe, that’s enough, so many heavens and your moment stopped within me, the best of days is the day that brings you.
May my mother forgive me but it was you who gave me life.
You might think they’re just words, so easy to say, how many poets have lied about love before now?, and there’s so much bullshit for each useful phrase, but the truth is that what happened to me is simple, there was a being to love and then there was a being who was loved, and it’s when you love that life happens, if I ruled the world that would be the only place a registry would happen, we’d have a card with our date of birth, ‘born 30 January 2014’, we’d choose our name with the person we loved, whoever came up with the idea of saying that it’s when our body is born that we become people didn’t know anything about love, nobody exists until they love, before you I was just a path towards me, an almost me, a kind of me, I loved you for myself to happen.
If they want to know where I am, let them search for you, and then look by your side.
Words are also good for loving.
We talk enough for so much to be left unsaid, you arrive tired, your work, the company, friends, football, bills, you let everything pass through the spaces you don’t fill, and when I hug you and ask you how your day’s been you say your regular Just The Usual, not one detail, not one story, where did those days go when you used to tell me everything?, where’s the euphoria from when nothing existed between life and words?, if you just said I Love You that’d be enough and everything in me would be calmed, three little words, you didn’t even need to say any more than that, to do any more, what’s the distance between a word and poetry?, you could stay just as you are, the sofa, the TV and your eyes lost, just a few words and I’d be yours for ever, love needs everything, even including a bit of grammar.
One day I’ll leave you to be able to love you again.
At dinner we are two different worlds, we exchange phrases the way you might exchange a dish, we’re on the surface of something that’s increasingly deep, there was so much to find but neither of us has the courage to look, open up the cracks, tear them down to the bones, rip the flesh off this intolerable peace that is tolerating us, and understand what remains of us, what is left over from what we once knew we were, and it could be me, I could be the one to tell you I can no longer bear it, I no longer want it, it hurts too much, but the truth is I’m a coward and I’d rather invent love in your embrace, invent an orgasm in your cold need, invent an I Love You in your empty Fuck Me, I could be a brave woman and lose you so as to be in a position to win you again, but I’m afraid of your discovering that you can lose me and still be alive, there’s always at least one coward when there are two unhappinesses.
Today I will seduce you or I’ll kill you in me.
I’ve changed the furniture so as to seek you better, maybe the geography of a house will bring you back, then I bought a new outfit, with a tight skirt, even a little make-up, your favourite food in the oven, you come in and I smile at you, I kiss you with my tongue and you find it strange, I ask you for a hug, I so miss being hugged tight by you, my love, you surrender your arms, even a bit of your back and your torso, but you’re so far away that not even the dream can see you, how many parts are you divided into to keep yourself whole?, I fancy giving up right now but I insist, loving until the very last also means trying until the very last, I hitch up my skirt a little and ask you for pleasure, you need to know how to be a whore to know how to love entirely, and when you came it was time to go.
When I’m ready to live without you, then you can come and fetch me.
That was what she said, with her suitcases and not another word, there were a lot of tears to cry outside, she wanted something from a storybook, the romance, the white horse, the bent-backed kisses, even the prince if at all possible, he didn’t realise how he had failed her, he’d always done what showed up in books, being faithful, being respectful, taking care of the bills and being a good head of the family, and what separates a couple is often the wrong literature.
All unhappinesses should be for love, and all happinesses too.
I’m proud of the time when I cry, of seeing the human dimension in the look in a dog’s eye, of caressing hands with my mother’s wrinkles, of the filled-up space of a hug with someone I love, and there is nothing about pain that prevents me from believing in love.
Courage is the heroic side of love, and it’s an idiot too.
And so today I said to him I wanted him stretched out in my arms, I talked to him about my life being occupied by his, I told him all the stories about when I used to wander the streets hoping to see him, I’d leave home in the morning, nice and early, I was just a teenager and I didn’t even have any classes, but off I went, going out nice and early, I’d get into the packed rush-hour bus and had no interest in books or anything else, I walked the streets looking for him, I knew what time his father dropped him off by the park, I knew he would then go for breakfast with his mates at Cunha’s patisserie, I’d just be there watching him without taking any initiative at all and without even feeling unhappy, we had our whole lives to love each other and maybe if I’d made a move then it would have been too early, and there is nothing about time that prevents me from making it stop.
I waited twenty years to ask you to marry me, and later also to tell you my name.
And when you looked at me and didn’t find my request strange nor my words, I realised that all this time we’d been in the process of forming this minute, I was braver, I’m almost forty already and though you wouldn’t know it my body is no longer what it was, I’m afraid it’s age that will prevent you from fancying it, I don’t want to risk anything more and that’s why I took the risk, you didn’t react badly, a smile, an ‘I’m already married but thanks’, not bad, I have to admit, there are eternal loves that start off much worse than that, you should know, I respect your chances for happiness too much, I’m not going to insist on loving you and like that I will love you, you’ll be happy and you owe it to me even if you’ll never know it, and nothing about your not being happy with me prevents me from feeling important in your happiness.
I’m so happy in your happiness, and in the happiness of whoever is making you happy, too.
And one day the wind is blowing your way, like now, when I left, the sky overcast and everything prepared for another absence of you, and suddenly your hand on my shoulder, a simple smile, how am I to explain to the world that the beginning of the dream is what keeps us alive?, your words as though they were the invention of life, and nothing about being the happiest woman in the world when you kiss me prevents me from feeling unhappy with each second that you aren’t kissing me.
Love me for ever but most importantly of all love me always, and also right now.
I’m proud of the occurrence of us, and nothing in the occurrence of a future prevents me being reckless.
Pleasure is the first of arguments, and the last too.
‘Today we’re going to stop being rational and we’re going to be Men’,
&
nbsp; explained the woman, and she slowly started undressing, words are useful for undressing, and even more so for loving.
‘Something is useful to me is the most damnable expression I know, nobody can accept anything, nobody can condemn themselves to what is useful to them. The only thing useful to me is the certainty that I love you, and little more than that’,
the naked skin of one was already hidden under the naked skin of the other, and the reason for all things consists, give or take a little, of orgasm.
‘There are people who satisfy themselves with an explanation of impossibility. There are people for whom it’s enough to understand that it can’t be this, or simply why it must be that. There are people who don’t want to interpret what could be and prefer to realise what has to be. I don’t, in this bed, see any of those people. And it’s hard for me to understand, but it’s so good’,
perhaps they were coming to some agreement now, at least on the matter of the uselessness of sheets and the pleasant way they fell on the floor there seemed to be consensus, as well as on the question of the bed’s interesting capacity to support the occurrence of pleasure, only what has been created to support love ought to exist, even people.
‘The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who understand life, and those who are happy. Only what’s absurd creates change, and if life isn’t change then it might well also be the case that philosophy doesn’t exist, at least not one that makes sense of me. It’s so easy to do what has to be, and then carelessly forget what only might possibly be. It’s so easy to make reason explain things, and not understand that the reason we exist is in the simple possibility of losing it entirely, free will is the way God found for saying orgasm’,
they could choose, after the crazy moment of their bodies surrendering, to balance out their futures, her finding a space for him in her routine, making him her husband, giving him a corner of her sacred bed, he could dedicate himself to her every day, set himself up as the head of the family, the house, with food and clean clothes, they might even believe it’d be possible to maintain that happy impatience for years on end, but that, as everyone knows, would be completely impossible, and that was just why they did it.
‘Being in you twenty-four hours a day might be unsustainable, I know, but not being in you is unbearable, I’m sure’,
when they awoke they were still by each other’s side, neither one of them understood it, and that was why they went back to sleep in peace, whoever you want to share your sleeping with is the person with whom you ought to share your life, however unromantic that might be, and yet it’s actually not.
‘Less shaving, more loving.’
Your hands are on me and I obey, of course, I put down the blade, I even cut myself on the chin but what does that matter?, I feel like saying I love your mouth and everything that comes with it but I don’t get the time, there’s so much to feel and only one body to ensure it, and preserving a love is delivering it from evil, amen.
I do truly love you but I have a secret I can’t tell you, because there are always words I can’t say to you, gestures I can’t make, there are things that have to be kept far away from in between us, and preserving a love is delivering it from evil, amen.
I do truly love you but I have a secret I can’t tell you, it isn’t the secret of how your lips open to mine, nor even how important your skin is for preserving the balance in my nature, least of all of the moment when you look inside me and I’d like to believe in God and only then in you, and preserving a love is delivering it from evil, amen.
I do truly love you but I have a secret I can’t tell you, I could say I want to forget you all the time, tear you out of me and never see you again, that would already be too painful to be said but it’s not that, not least because after wanting to forget you what I want is to remember you for ever, keep you in the inexplicable moment of my memory, fall asleep with the recollection of you in my lap, or of your pleasure when we go into the night without death impeding us, I want to forget you all the time, like I said, and then I want to remember you for ever, and preserving a love is delivering it from evil, amen.
I do truly love you but I have a secret I can’t tell you, not because I don’t want to but because you know it already, that’s the only possible explanation, we agreed ten o’clock and you never showed up, and I just stood here restlessly waiting for you and you didn’t come, I’m sure you already knew what I had to tell you and never told you, it hurts me so much to say that to you, you know?, I can bear a whole life’s hurting so long as it isn’t yours, just imagine how much space your tears occupy in me, the scale of your hurt in what makes me hurt, and now you don’t come and it’s as though I weren’t here, the street is here but I’m standing still, nothing happens when you’re not here, just me and a secret I didn’t tell you for fear it would hurt, and maybe now it’s hurting you and I’m not there, loving is also being prepared to share what hurts, and preserving a love is delivering it from evil, amen.
I do truly love you but I have a secret I can’t tell you, for no particular reason, just because it’s no longer a secret at all and it’s already too late to tell it to you, I have an insuperable desert on your side of the bed, how many silences can missing somebody bear?, preserving a love isn’t delivering it from evil after all, it’s rather understanding its evil and accepting it as good, amen.
You’re the most beautiful woman in the world but you don’t love me,
you walk past me and you don’t even register, a forced hello while you’re thinking about something or other you don’t tell me, you probably don’t even know my name, I’m just that big, bumbling guy from work, and just a little while back I told Joana that one day I’ll get tired of being yours,
but not now as I love you so.
You’re the most beautiful woman in the world but I do find it hard to believe,
and I hope you like this restaurant, I spent hours thinking about what to do, I looked online for the best reviews, imagined which place you’d want to preserve as a memory of me and you for ever for the first time, fortunately Joana suggested this place to me and here we are, it seems perfect to me, but to me just having you here and knowing my name would be enough for nothing to be wrong, you know that, any minute now I promise I’ll summon up the courage to kiss you,
but not now as I love you so.
You’re the most beautiful woman in the world but this weather absolutely won’t do,
as I wanted to look at you better and hide you inside my eyes without needing an umbrella, you chose the most beautiful dress in the world, Joana had already told me there could be no more beautiful bride than you, but to tell the truth any dress would have worked for me, and the church so full,
where did we have so many friends hidden away?,
the priest looks at us and he knows we’ve found God, and He must be jealous up there, what matters is that it’s not long now before you’ll be my wife and I’m crying now just thinking about it, I’m sorry, I’m so happy I can’t cope, just give me a few minutes to be strong again,
but not now as I love you so.
You’re the most beautiful woman in the world but I don’t know if I can bear a house like this,
so much space taken up and an intolerable desert, I wanted to believe in the existence of us, to fight for what we could still be, but when you appear you don’t bring me with you, there’s a strange feeling when I hug you,
what the hell am I missing to feel the whole of you?,
Joana says it’ll pass and we’re not too late for happiness for ever, maybe tomorrow I’ll just give up on the whole thing,
but not now as I love you so.
You’re the most beautiful woman in the world but if you want to know the truth I don’t love you,
Joana isn’t dazzling at the altar and I’m up here forgotten with you,
how do you tell somebody that we’ve got lost along the way?,
it’s the same priest who married us, what the hell has happen
ed to my life, so many people, so much fear,
how do you interrupt a wedding ceremony with a proposal?,
one day, I promise, I’ll stop doing something like this for love,
but not now as I’ve wasted so much already.
Why do I write, anyway?,
the doubts every day, the tired eyes and still the urgency of a phrase, I write to ask, no more than that, or to seek out, there are so many things that hurt and nothing to explain, God’s cowardice above all,
who are these people who’re ruling the world?,
so many stains on the wall and not one to cover me up, I’d really like a childhood just so as not to know how you reach clear-sightedness,
bring me a bit of unconsciousness and I’ll prove it right now.
Of course I believe in the genius of mankind, but with him comes everything that wounds, no invention is inoffensive, not even a poem is inoffensive, and when I write I know there’s also the danger of a tear shed, a sheer blade perhaps, deep inside whoever reads me,
such a dark day today, a car horn in the distance, my mother in bed, the foolish desire to alter the world, do you think if I squeeze my eyes shut it’ll change?,
this text is already too long and I just wanted to write that I don’t know why I write, and I’m afraid that when somebody knows why they write they’re not writing at all, I’ll probably be meagre but never a bureaucrat of letters, a writer can even not write but what he can’t do is not feel, there are so many geniuses who have forgotten to be ingenious,
The Day I Found You Page 30