My Tender Matador

by Pedro Lemebel

Because you are and always will be, A day of sunshine, for my soul.

Nothing is ideal, she insisted, in order to feel the crystalline warmth of pain moistening her eyes, barely wetting the blue watercolors of the wilting flowers that awaited the bitter histrionic dewdrops of her tears.

But love is like the wind, says the song, and one day it will leave.

No, it wasn’t that, she thought, it’s the way men tell stories. The brutal way they talk about the urgency of sex, like bullfighters—Me first, I’ll stick it in you, I’ll split you in two, I’ll put it in, I’ll tear you to pieces—with no tact or delicacy.

Love so true, how could we know, would strike our hearts with such a blow. When past all hope, alas, too late we are merely prisoners of fate.

To tell the truth, now that he thought about it, he had worn them so as not to have to look anybody in the eye—or rather, so that nobody would see how his eyes were rejoicing, like those of a vulture, while so many doves were dying.

Life was so simple and so stupid at the same time.