Amora: Stories

by Natalia Borges Polesso

Things get lost between my head and my mouth—somewhere unknown to me—and they never come back.

We’re all completely unknown to ourselves.

but it’s the weird stuff that brings people closer together.

only she knows, even though this is what every couple the world over is like; when it comes to the two of us, only we know. And what matters is believing we’re the only ones.

I got tired of traveling. Of the feeling of being always, immanently, and unstoppably in motion. I’ve been away for so long I don’t belong to any one place anymore. I’m like an object, you know? Untethered from the world, identifying with nothing, floating alone through the vast void and its infinite possibilities.

Something has got to give, something has got to move me, you know? I can’t carry on living this way. To be clear: I’m not interested in killing myself, far from it, I’m too self-involved. I just want to live, you know?

I’m writing because I still love you. With no expectations for a response. This is a desire. Not a cry for help, not my soul reaching out, none of that. Just a desire, begun.

I’ve been thinking of myself as place, you know? The body as place? The body as metaphor for a place traveled, or a life’s cartography—with all its marks, signposts, and islands.

From the outside, my sadness seems muted. The gristle of my disillusionment stays on the inside and carves a melancholic force in my heart, which I try to cover up with more lies.

On rainy days, I exist because I can’t not.

what I’m concerned with is creating love in the space of this distance, which, today, the rain has kept from shrinking.

I’ll walk to the corner with eyes shut, counting backward until I reach your phone number, until I reach the day we met for the first time—because I still want to get to know you, every day.