CANTO DA CEREJA

  Ah, the brave ones. The adventurers. The souls who cross continents in search of a better life. The ones who make it against all odds, who carve out a place in the world with sheer determination and the occasional tear-jerking anecdote. You’ve got to admire the courage. Really, you do. But courage, as it turns out, is not the same as honesty. Honesty is a bit trickier. Honesty requires consistency, a sort of baseline integrity that doesn’t waver depending on the situation. And that, dear reader, is where the cracks begin to show. Once upon a time, I met one of these noble seekers fortune. A hard worker. A survivor. Someone who had fought their way into a new life. And for a while, I liked him. More than that—I respected him. I helped him. I wanted him to succeed. Silly me. Because here’s the thing about people: some of them tell you heart-wrenching stories while withholding the basic truth. Some of them look you in the eye one day and tell you things that mak e you trust them,...

  Vejo tudo com clareza agora. Não entrei nisto de forma ingénua, mas sim com uma abertura genuína, pronta para acreditar no melhor. Testei limites, observei sinais, dei o benefício da dúvida. Mas chega um momento—e ele chega sempre—em que a ilusão se desfaz. Porquê eu? Eu nunca me engano por muito tempo. Fico confortável o suficiente, confiante o suficiente, para saber que o espaço que ocupo na vida de alguém é uma escolha minha. E se sentir que estou no lugar errado, saio. Não me prendo. Não perco tempo com o que não vale a pena. E, acima de tudo, vejo. A verdade vem sempre ao de cima. Não importa quanto tempo demore, não importa o quanto tentem mascarar contradições, mais cedo ou mais tarde, a realidade impõe-se. Mas pergunto-me: será que não vi antes por ter sido tudo virtual? Será que a distância e a ausência do real me fizeram hesitar? Talvez. Mas mesmo assim, tenho perspicácia suficiente para notar os pequenos gestos, as pequenas atitudes que vêm do outro lado. Porque a ver...

“Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die…”—Bradley Cooper sang it, and maybe he meant it. But I don’t.   I want to go back. Back to that. To “A. ”   “A” wasn’t love in the way people tell bedtime stories about love. “A” was flesh—hot, electric, undeniable. “A” was skin against skin, breath stolen, nails down backs, bodies moving like they’d been choreographed by something beyond human comprehension. It wasn’t just chemistry—it was alchemy. Explosive, chaotic, unrepeatable.   They say other people have been through the same thing. I don’t believe them. Not like this. Not us. We did it better.   And it was always on. No off switch, no dull moments, no routine. We lived inside heat. Inside the kind of passion that makes you question if you’ve ever really been awake before.   But here’s the thing about fire—you don’t get to keep it. Not forever.   What started as a secret became a lifetime, became a legend, became something no one else will ever understand. And...

If my relationships in 2024 were a book, they wouldn’t be a romance novel. They wouldn’t even be erotica. No, they would be a psychological thriller —one where the protagonist keeps making questionable choices, the plot twists make no sense, and by the end, the audience is left wondering if anything was real at all.   You see, I don’t do love. I don’t do romance. I do sex. And yet, somehow, this year turned into a collection of non-romantic, non-sexual, utterly baffling encounters with men who, quite frankly, should have come with warning labels.   Act I: The Gamer Who Thinks He’s Muad’Dib (But Is Full of Fucking BS)   It all started with a message. He was the one who initiated contact—on the company chat, of all places. Now, I may not always make the best decisions, but I do know that mixing work and whatever this was going to be? Not a great idea. So, instead of entertaining it there, I gave him my phone number.   Not even 30 seconds later, my WhatsApp was lighting...

  Hay mensajes que son como botellas lanzadas al mar. Pero no como en las películas, donde alguien perdido en una isla escribe desesperadamente una petición de ayuda, esperando que algún día alguien la encuentre. No. Estas son botellas lanzadas por puro reflejo, por costumbre, sin intención de obtener respuesta. Palabras vacías enviadas no porque haya algo que decir, sino porque el silencio absoluto quizás parezca demasiado frío.   Recibí uno de esos. Un texto que, al contrario de lo que prometía la notificación, no era un mensaje para mí, sino un monólogo. Un soliloquio en el que yo era solo espectadora, sin derecho a réplica.   Y qué monólogo tan fascinante: una historia envolvente sobre fiebres pasajeras, una exnovia que necesitaba ayuda para mudarse, viajes que nunca se concretaron y, por supuesto, la guinda del pastel: una reflexión metafísica sobre lo peligroso que sería estar conmigo. “Eres mi manzana del pecado”, escribió, convencido de que estaba diciendo algo ...