I never knew what envy was.
I watched it pass by every evening
like people you cross on the road:
nameless, faceless, soundless.
I was whole.
Or so I believed.
The world owed me nothing.
Not a house, not a body, not a laugh.
And though I walked with empty hands,
I had enough for everything.
Until I saw.
I saw people coming together like water gathers.
I saw two shadows become one.
I saw mouths seeking each other
like animals that recognize each other in the night.
I saw hands staying.
Breasts learning each other.
Names becoming home.
Then something opened inside me
like a crack opens in the earth.
It wasn’t courage.
It wasn’t hate.
It was a hollow.
An ache.
Like hunger, but in the heart.
And I knew
that’s what I envied:
not the bodies,
not the laughter,
not the happy photos pinned to walls,
but that invisible thing that held them up.
That which made them stay.
I grew old without wrinkles.
I grew old from wanting.
From piled-up want.
From want with no way out.
From spoiled, wasted want.
Everything stayed far from me.
The songs.
The outbursts of laughter.
The intertwined hands.
I stayed watching from the shore
like someone watching a river flow by
who doesn’t know how to swim.
It hurts to see others embrace,
as if it didn’t hurt.
As if the world didn’t bite when it brings two souls together.
It hurts because I too have arms,
but I have no one to wrap them around.
It’s envy, I say.
But sometimes it feels like something else.
It feels like hunger, and it feels like I’m dying from it.
Hunger to love beautifully.
Hunger to be a home.
Hunger for someone to name me
without my having to ask.
I cry inside myself.
My guts twist into knots.
My mouth turns to desert.
I wish I could say words
that didn’t sound broken.
Paint a portrait with the evening light.
Give a flower that wouldn’t wilt upon touch.
A song or
a silence where two could fit.
But here I am,
alone,
watching how affection leaves
those who don’t care for it.
And me,
choking on this wanting.
Wanting everything.
Wanting nothing.
Wanting her.
I saw her.
Not once.
Many times.
In many faces.
As if the same fire
were peeking through different windows.
I learned she liked the earth.
And I became hands.
I became seed.
I became furrow.
I learned to plow.
To sow.
To tend.
To wait.
To harvest.
My nails filled with dirt.
My neck with sun.
My days with long silences.
But all that happened
was she stepped on me.
And she didn’t even know
I was the dust rising onto her shoe.
Later I learned she liked music.
And I became an ear.
And I became a throat.
I listened to the birds
split their chests open at dawn.
To the rain dismantling rooftops.
To the wind saying her name
through the branches.
I learned to sing.
Not beautifully.
Not loudly.
But I sang.
I made a music for her.
A small music.
A music that fit in the palm of a hand.
She didn’t hear me.
She covered her ears with her own noise.
And left again.
Later I learned she liked books.
And I became a word.
I laid them one after another,
like petals forming a flower.
I wrote a letter.
Two.
A notebook.
A book.
A whole lifetime in crooked lines.
I wrote until I wore myself out.
Until I was left with no ink and no voice.
She never read me.
Perhaps she didn’t understand
the language in which I was breaking.
So I sat down to think
what else she might like.
What else I could become.
If she likes dusk,
I’ll be the sun falling behind the hill,
letting itself die slowly,
bleeding gold and orange
so someone might watch it.
If she likes rain,
I’ll be a dark cloud,
a full belly,
a drumbeat on the roof.
If she likes the sea,
I’ll be sand,
so her fury might fade against me,
even if she erases me.
I want to guess her.
I want to become a thing.
I want to erase myself
to fit inside her desire.
But desire can’t be manufactured.
And eyes cannot be forced.
Today I understand
that some distances aren’t measured in steps.
That some names don’t belong to us.
That some fires weren’t made
to warm us.
Perhaps I should surrender.
Not like a coward surrenders,
but like the evening surrenders:
fully,
soundlessly,
letting the night do its work.
No matter what I do.
No matter what I become.
There are gazes that don’t know how to pronounce our face.
And here I remain,
with my hunger sitting beside me,
watching how the world loves itself
without noticing
those of us who learned too late
that you can also live
by watching the rain fall on foreign soil.
