Cat, this little grasshopper still loves you.

A letter for a love that lingers between nostalgia and farewell

This post is my intimate letter to lost love, a reflection where nostalgia and heartbreak mix, and where a little grasshopper still loves you, even when memory and farewell coexist.

I’m not sure why I’m writing to you again. Maybe because some wounds don’t know how to close, they only learn to breathe. I have learned to live without you —or at least that’s what I tell myself every morning when I wake up without your embrace. Lately, it’s been more bearable. Your absence is still here, like a persistent echo, but it no longer hurts with the fury it once did. On Saturday, I cried for you again. It was brief. Something —perhaps a look or a scent— took me back to one of those moments that were ours alone —so ours they could not fit in any other body— and the tears came without asking permission.

I spend the days with Doña Teresa. Today we went to the beach. Whenever she speaks of you, she does it with a tenderness that disarms me: she names you with such esteem, with such nostalgia, as if evoking you were a way of bringing you back into the world. And I only listen, because if she knew that every time she utters your name, another little shard of my splintered heart gives up, she would fall silent.

I’m tired of waiting. Of counting the minutes between the messages that never arrive. That’s why I have stopped writing to you. I want to teach my heart to un-inhabit you. But I don’t know if I can. Although I think I need to forget you, the truth is I don’t want to. I don’t want to forget what I feel for you. I only want my heart to stop hurting for you.

Last night, again, I tried to calm my body with the memory of you. I caressed myself, as if my hands could bring you back to life. But I couldn’t go on. It wasn’t pleasure; it was nostalgia. I could only think of us. Of every meeting, every sigh, every post-orgasmic smile you drew from me with your mere existence. My sex misses you. But what hurts most is that my soul does, too.

Sometimes I do something at home —something simple, everyday— and I remember you, and I smile. Your memory still lights me up. Doña Teresa says my face changes when I talk about you. And perhaps she’s right; perhaps you still dwell in my gestures.

Our songs remain a sweet punishment. The other day, at Marta’s house, one of those songs you used to sing to me came on, and I had to ask them to change it. It was as if the memory struck me right in the center of my chest, where only you knew how to dwell. It hurts. Your leaving hurts. Not knowing about you hurts. The hollow where your embrace should be hurts.

Sometimes I convince myself that soon I will hear from you, and that fills me with fear. Fear of not knowing how to survive myself if I see you again. How could I withstand another goodbye after touching you once more? How could I hug you, knowing that once again I will have to let you go?

I am tired. Tired of looking at my phone waiting for a “good morning” that doesn’t come. Because in those two words, I found the irrefutable proof that, even for a fleeting instant, you thought of me.

I hate this hope. This damned illusion that at any moment you will appear. My mind plays cruel games with me. It tells me you don’t care, that what we had was fleeting to you. But my reason tries to defend you: perhaps you are in a place where you cannot communicate. And then I fall again, knowing that that explanation is only the refuge of this stubborn hope.

On Friday, I travel. And I only want to see you. I imagine myself sitting with you, drinking coffee, like two old lovers planning a future that will never exist. Because we know it: you are not meant for me, and I am not meant for you. And yet, I fell in love, despite everything. I swallowed our rules: no commitments, no sex, no love. What an irony. I fell in love with the “just having a good time.”

On Friday, I will also leave our apartment. Your chair. Our bed. Your soap in the shower. Laughter floats like ghosts between the walls. It is the beginning of goodbye. But I still do not want to let go of your name.

Cat. Gatubelo. Gatolín.
This little grasshopper still loves you
Return to me.

Nel Duarte

Diciembre 7, 2015 Willemstad, Curacao

Read another letter about absence and memory → April 27 of Every Year, or Rest in peace my life partner