Another goodbye to Brazil and a letter to us
WhatsApp Image 2021-10-06 at 1.17.50 PM.jpeg
Sometimes I feel like you have scars and I have open wounds. Although scars are sensitive and can sometimes hurt when it’s cold, after a while it won’t bother you if you touch it. Now, every single time you poke an open wound, it will burn. It seems obvious, I know, and what’s even more obvious is that one day it will all heal: but it’s hard to believe it when the answers are as tough (and simple) as “give it time.” I know you don’t mean to poke my wounds. I also don’t mean to freeze your scars when I turn my heat off. We are so different. It’s silly to think we would ever be going to share the same coping process. So, we decide to take the road, and we let the wind decide where to put the past uncontrollable moments of our performance together. We decide to rehearse better ways to say what’s needed. I sleep in your chest. You interlace your legs with mine. As two immigrants we share a world of inconvenient thoughts and wishes, fears and dreams, waters and flakes, hard-swallows, and soft-drinks. Then you feel like my band-aid – and honestly maybe you are – protecting me from looking at it every day and keeping other things from getting inside. And indeed, I feel safe from the outside infections when you’re there measuring the spot for perfect coverage. I look deeply into your sharp eyes, so focused, so brown, so kind, making sure not to blink when it’s time to try your way in this fight one more time. It’s not like you’re losing a battle, the opposite, I feel like you’re so close to finding the right stitches that it makes me wonder if I would ever be able to do this alone and for myself. You tell me you think the same. We wonder where we would be if not together, and the answer is always the best laugh: “we suck as divorced people. It’s just not for us.” We’ve come so far, my love. This trip is the result of everything we fought for. Our battles and victories now are making sense, and the universe seems to be acting accordingly for the first time. Here, in Bahia, Brazil, where we decided to immerse ourselves in our flaws, will be where we leave the best part of us to rest in harmony. We have tightened our love throughout the knots connecting its cities and built our own magical medicine with salty kisses. We are holding off the trust issues and saying yes, for the third time to ourselves, for the first time to our protectors up-somewhere-in-the-sky, in hopes that our hands and mouths and words are guiding us back home. Whether it is New York City, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro or Bahia, our home is where we’re together… always.