I woke up with my heart pounding against my ribs.
As if I had run miles inside a dream that didn't let me escape from anything.
I opened my eyes and the room was the same as always, but I didn't.
I felt my hands asleep, as if they still carried the weight of something that should never have happened.
I stood still, listening.
Wanting to convince me that the silence was real.
But in my head the alarm kept ringing, sticking like an electric beep that doesn't turn off even if I press all the buttons.
I don't know what time it was.
I don't know if I slept ten minutes or three hours.
I just know that I thought of you.
And that fucked me up more than sleep.
Because I don't want to see you.
But I can't stop seeing you either.
I got out of bed with shortness of breath, as if I had been fighting with myself. I walked to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror. And I didn't recognize myself.
There was something in my eyes...
Something that wasn't there before.
An opaque glow, as if he was looking through me, not at me.
I washed my face.
It didn't reach.
I grabbed the pothole, strong, with white knuckles, trying to get the cold water to take away the image that suddenly appeared to me:
You, crying.
You, saying you didn't want to live like that.
You, asking me to stop.
And I didn't stop.
I told myself it was an impulse.
That I was overwhelmed.
That I didn't want.
That I'm not like that.
But the dream didn't let me lie to myself.
Not quite.
Because in the dream I ran, yes... but I ran from myself.
And when I woke up, that feeling didn't go away.
I put on my shirt like someone who puts on a shield.
I tied my sneakers almost without looking.
I walked around the house avoiding everything I could remember you.
The armchair.
The table.
The door to my room.
But what I avoided the most was looking at my hands.
Because in the dream they were strangers, and here, awake, they still look like someone else.
And the worst thing is that I don't know what to do with this.
I don't know how to talk to you.
I don't know how to hold your gaze without feeling that I'm entering a place where I no longer have the right to be.
I would like to apologize to you, but I can't.
Because if I say it out loud, if I really say it, I have to admit things that I still don't know how to face.
Then I do what I always do.
I lock myself in on myself.
I get cold.
The tough guy.
The one who doesn't feel.
But I'm feeling.
And it's worse than any blow, any scream, any fight.
Because no matter how much I want to escape,
The alarm keeps ringing.
And I know he's not letting me know that I lost you.
He's warning something more fucked up:
That I missed.