By Gio Quezada
Looking for coffee at four in the morning,
I knew my life would never be the same.
That coffee was a preparation,
a small rite for what was already here.
I walked because I did not know
what else to do with my life.
I walked with my deaf pain,
with the people brushing past me,
with my loneliness and the music that would not save me.
Lost, I crossed parties
on one of the most famous street,
the universe again insisting
on showing me its contradictions.
I reached a cold place
that smelled of grease, alcohol, emptiness
drank the most insipid coffee
I had ever tasted in my life,
and suddenly… you.
Like a slow‑motion scene in a tired film,
you and her stepping out of a car,
carrying the electricity of the night,
the careless desire of youth.
I had no room left for pain or sadness.
I felt nothing.
After all these years you did not love me
you never loved me
and still, my body had no space left to break.
An hour earlier, life had taken her from me.
My mother left me forever.
And now you
you with your hypocrisy,
your loud ego,
showing me exactly who you were
from the very first moment.
But it did not hurt me.
Because only love can hurt.
Only love could destroy me
And I had nothing left to sacrifice.
Then the epiphany came, quiet, merciless:
I did not love you.
I never did.
I could not.
The passion that excused my lack of self‑love
all those years
was never love.
My mother hated you,
even when she pretended otherwise.
She was right.
And her last goodbye
was also her final lesson
oh, mothers.
They are always right
Dawn arrived.
I walked back to the funeral,
still holding that coffee,
knowing the final sip,
insipid, bitter, insignificant
Just like you
was my goodbye too.