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Carmen

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Let me tell you a story,
that took place on a night in Amsterdam,
where the hotel lights
seemed to flicker in my native tongue.

I was beside a lady,
not my mother, but something deeper
than all bloodlines combined.

The kind of woman who doesn’t ask what weighs on you,
but knows,
as if you had met in a dream
not yet deciphered.

A being who doesn’t give you lessons,
but gently steals them from you,
sowing them in your soul
without you knowing when or how.

She told me, with a gaze
that had been both storm and patience, love and war:

“Laugh, child.
Laugh in the face of time,
and you’ll see—it’ll become your friend.
Take it to dance and make it move to your rhythm.”

And I laughed.
Not to prove I could,
but to make myself believe again.

And that’s when I understood that
sometimes the music fades,
your steps stumble,
and still... you keep dancing.

I understood
you don’t live for the dance,
but for that one evening
when someone saw you whole,
even if you were only shards.

I understood that life is meant to be lived,
not just told.
I understood that love hurts,
but it is the most honest form of pain.

I learned you can be alone,
but never weak.

That life doesn’t wait for you,
but it doesn’t chase you away either.

That it’s okay to be, in the same body,
a child and a lioness,
a queen and a woman,
tired of questions and cheap chatter,
but full of fire,
a fire that would make teenagers
pale with envy.

I learned that elegance
is not in dresses or words,
but in the eyes of a mother
who asked for nothing,
but gave everything.

That beauty isn’t measured in years,
but in the laughter that defies the past,
and in the courage to embrace what comes next,
without fear, without trembling.

That if you know how to wear your crown,
time cannot touch you,
and you become, unwittingly,
a living legend.

And that it’s okay to be a beautiful mad soul,
to dance despite envy,
to set out without a map,
and to love again,
even if you’ve been broken
once, twice,
or a hundred times.

It was an evening.
But some evenings,
spent beside people like her,
become silent eternities
you carry with you
wherever the road may lead.

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