There are women you remember.

And then there is one.

One who never needed to arrive because she was already there.

I was already alive when I met her. But I still did not know who I was.

She was already there.

Somewhere inside what my life was going to become.

Then came the years.

The house. The sleepless nights. Small hands calling us from dark rooms. Four times, love turned into children.

The tiredness.

The bills.

The good days.

The others.

The wounds no one saw.

And her.

Always her.

In the breathing of the house. In the space my hand leaves behind when it reaches for her. In that part of the night when the body has not yet said anything and yet is already saying everything.

I know her by heart.

Or so I thought.

But memory is not enough.

It never is.

Because there are bodies that, the more you know them, the more mystery they keep.

And because every time she comes close, the impossible happens again:

her body does not end where my desire begins.

It mingles.

It remains.

It lives inside me with the patience of things that have decided never to leave.

There is a way she looks at me that still undoes me.

After so many years.

After so many children.

After so many nights we somehow survived.

After so many times life tried to leave us on the far side of ourselves.

And there she is.

With that way she has of knowing something hurts before I find the courage to say it. Of feeling what I am thinking. Of sensing the wound before there is blood.

Sometimes it is enough for her to come close.

For the air to change between us.

For her to move the hair away from her neck.

And something wakes.

I do not know what it is called.

Perhaps nothing.

It is the body recognising home.

Then my mouth knows where to go before I do.

My hand remembers.

The skin answers.

The faint perfume behind her ear.

The familiar curve of her neck.

The exact place where my mouth remembers who I am.

And the world, which weighs so heavily during the day, begins to fall from our shoulders.

Slowly.

Garment by garment.

Fear by fear.

Until there is only that smallest distance left.

Her breath against mine.

The darkness learning our names.

The tremor.

The pause.

Her mouth.

Mine.

And that moment when desire stops being desire because it no longer wants anything.

It has found it.

I desire her.

Still.

But not as one desires what is new.

I desire her as one desires what one has loved so deeply that it has become part of one's own breathing.

With hunger.

With tenderness.

With the urgency of the first time.

With the certainty of all the others.

With the fierce patience of things one knows one never wants to lose.

Because there are bodies you travel across.

And there are bodies in which you learn to live.

Hers is my place.

My rest.

My sweetest danger.

The only distance I have never wanted to cross in order to move away.

I desire her when she laughs. When she is angry. When she waits for me. When she touches me without knowing I have needed someone to do it all day.

I desire her even when she takes care of me.

And perhaps that is where I feel most vulnerable.

Because no one should know that much about anyone.

No one should know the exact place where another person begins to break.

Know when they are cold.

When they lie and say they are fine.

When they are falling apart inside.

And still remain.

Sometimes I watch her sleep and understand that love is not always a beautiful word.

Sometimes it is a tired woman.

A woman who stays.

Who covers you when you are cold. Who gathers the pieces you keep leaving around the house. Who has seen the man you are and the one you pretend to be.

There are nights when I watch her sleep.

Nothing more.

Her hair untidy on the pillow.

One open hand.

The quiet breathing.

And the whole room suspended in that instant when nothing is happening and yet a life is happening.

Then I think perhaps love is this.

A woman who has seen my ruins from the inside and still knows where to place a light.

But then she wakes.

She looks at me.

And it happens again.

Everything.

The slow fever.

The hunger.

The first time hidden inside all the others.

That ancient electricity still running between us when the world falls silent and our bodies begin speaking a language no one else understands.

And then I understand what it has taken me a lifetime to understand.

I have never desired her despite time.

I desire her because of time.

Because of everything that has remained after us.

Because of the nights when we made love while life seemed too large.

Because of those when all we knew how to do was hold each other and it was enough.

Because of every time one of us was about to fall and the other stepped in with their whole body.

Because of the times we saved each other without knowing it.

She knows who I was.

She knows who I have tried to be.

She knows the man who gets up.

And the one who hides.

She has seen my most beautiful days.

And those days when I myself would not have wanted to look at me.

And she is still here.

That is her miracle.

Not having loved me when it was easy.

But having learned my shadows without ever ceasing to recognise me.

That is why, when night closes the door and we are left alone, she still knows how to take me back to the first fire.

She can still brush against me and bring back the hunger.

She can still open the door to a room and make something in me eighteen again.

She can still look at me and leave me defenceless.

After everything.

In spite of everything.

No.

No.

Precisely because of everything.

Because the only distance between the life I have and the life I would not know how to live is her.

And then I understand.

That everything I have been has come to flow here.

Into this woman.

Into this companion.

Into this mother who turned love into life four times.

Into this presence that cares for me even when she does not know I am about to fall.

Into this skin I know.

Into this skin I will never finish knowing.

If someone asked me one day where what I am ends, I would not point to my skin.

I would look for her.

I would wait for her to raise her eyes.

And I would say:

there.

Because where she begins

I do not end.

But neither do I begin.

What begins

is what I am when she is here.

Because I can lose many things.

My direction.

My calm.

Even faith.

But if I lose her, I do not know who would remain.

Perhaps a man.

Perhaps a body.

Perhaps a shadow learning to pronounce her name without a voice.

Luckily, when night bends over us, she is still here.

And all it takes is for her to touch me.

For her to bring her mouth close to mine.

For her to look at me again as though she might still be able to save me.

Then everything falls into place.

Desire.

Life.

Fear.

Love.

And me.

I become again.

Because she is here.

And while she is,

everything I am

will continue.

Will go on being.

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