The question returns like an echo that never learns, like a series I keep watching knowing I am not the one in it.

I see it passing by in shop windows, in couples holding hands, in borrowed scenes I pretend not to want.

I was never a hallway love, nor a classroom one, nor promises written in notebooks.

Maybe they’re saving one for me, a late one, an office kind of love, full of long looks and well-thought mistakes.

I don’t know who I would be there.

The one who trembles?

The one who burns?

The one who feels too much and pretends she doesn’t?

Sometimes my mind overflows and it scares me.

I hope no one can hear everything I keep quiet when I desire.

They say beauty depends on the eye.

So tell me— in which mirror do I not exist?

I am gentle.

I listen.

I have busy hands, routines, small scars.

I move my body, even if I don’t enjoy it.

I breathe, even when it hurts.

I’ve seen bodies loved without asking permission.

I’ve seen romances begin where I wasn’t.

I am twenty and love is still a word without temperature.

Still, I want it.

Even if it exhausts.

Even if it suffocates.

Even if it means staying when leaving would be easier.

Where are you?

Don’t arrive perfect.

Arrive late— just arrive.

I still believe in vertigo, in racing hearts, in loving too much and not knowing what to do with it.

If you don’t come, it will be me, surrounded by cats, knitting affections that don’t leave.

That’s not a bad ending.

They say someone exists waiting for the same name.

I hope so.

I just want, at least once, to feel that I, too, was a place someone wanted to return to.

– Lala.