After you spoke to me like that - calm, simple, without opening any door - something in me suddenly loosened.
I don't know if it was pride, expectation or the last piece of hope I had left.
You didn't react badly.
You weren't cold, you weren't sharp.
And that... that was worse.
Because if you had answered me wrong, I had a place to support the anger.
If you had yelled at me, I had a place to support the excuse.
If you had gone bankrupt, I had somewhere to support the guilt.
But no.
You spoke to me with that neutrality that people have who no longer expect anything.
That voice that no longer trembles.
That tone that no longer leaves room for interpretations.
And there I felt it:
I arrived late.
Not in a romantic sense.
Not in a "I lost you."
But in that deeper, more human, more intimate sense:
I was late when I could fix you.
Late to the moment when it still mattered.
Late to the exact point where I could change something without hurting everything.
I walked to another environment without making noise.
I didn't want you to see what was happening inside me.
But inside... it was chaos.
A lump in my throat that I didn't want to become a tear.
A tremor in my chest that I couldn't accommodate.
A thought nailed:
"Now that I want, you don't need anything from me anymore."
And that hurts in a weird way.
Like when you open your hand to grab something and discover that it is no longer there.
That he's already gone.
That he didn't lose it there: he lost it much earlier.
Then I sat down.
I breathed slowly.
I told myself it was nothing.
That I was tired.
That tomorrow was going to be different.
Emergency lies.
But the truth was there, at a point I didn't want to look at:
I can't enter a place you've already left.
What I try to sound normal
After a few minutes, I came back.
I didn't want to, but something in me needed to get closer even a little,
As if a casual comment could undo what is not undone.
I saw you arranging something.
I don't even remember what.
You were calm.
You were in your world.
I approached with a common phrase, a stupidity that meant nothing:
"Che... is everything okay there?"
Three words.
Simple.
Normal.
They didn't say "it hurts."
They didn't say "sorry."
They didn't say "I don't know how to stop losing you."
But when I said them, the voice didn't accompany me.
I barely broke, in an almost imperceptible whisper, as if my vocal cords were also tired of acting.
And you noticed it.
You didn't turn completely, but your body made that small involuntary movement of those who register a different vibration.
You didn't say anything.
You didn't ask me anything.
You only looked at me for a second, with that new serenity that disarms me completely.
"Yes," you replied. All good.
And then I knew it was true.
That for the first time in a long time, everything was fine... for you.
And that's precisely why, there was nothing left for me in that sentence.
I felt that I had to say something else, something that justified my small fracture of voice, but nothing came out.
I had no words.
I had no right to look for them.
So I nodded.
As if everything was in order.
As if those three words hadn't revealed more about me than everything I said in recent months.
I turned around to hide it.
So that you wouldn't see how he swallowed that knot that he didn't want to leave.
And as I walked towards the other room, a thought escaped me that I didn't ask for, but that appeared the same:
"You used to break down... now I'm breaking down."
And I understood that that's the right part.
The part that touches me.
The part that arrives late, just like me.