I am afraid to hurt you again

While you were fortifying the reasons that justify our separation

I was listening while smiling the smile of the knower that this discussion would happen one day,

a smile that connects the corners of my mouth to tears

and swings my lips trembling

That day I did not express my anger like others do

I did not shout in your face

I did not break the window glass with my hand

I did not injure my hand

I did not fire thirty shots into the sky to make their empties fall at my feet to deny the smell of my burning with the smell of gunpowder,

I did not quarrel with my luck

I did not call a friend late at night to curse all women

I did not overuse painkillers

I did not drink alcohol

I did not pray

I did not fall into the arms of another woman

except that I did not venture to walk more than two steps away from my bed

and I never held anything heavier in my hands than the image I had drawn for you in my imagination

All I wished that day was that I could shake you by your shoulders to tighten my shoulders again

But I did not move a muscle

not because I could not convince you that you were wrong

but because I did not want to win against you

Sixty days have passed and you still don’t realize

that I wanted to win you, not against you

And if I wanted to count our faults as you did, we would have stumbled upon separation long ago or perhaps love was never meant to be,

Usually men, before starting to participate in a bull race, vow if one of them survives

to do the thing he was afraid to do all his life

Whenever I think of this marathon

I find myself, if I survive this separation, that the thing I fear most and have to do;

is to love you again