6 - On Loving 🍎

Cheeky amulets, plush hearts, grand gestures and chocotorta.

It’s been over a year that I’ve published on here and after months of attempts and failures it still feels so STICKY. Why is it so hard sometimes to see things through?

I found an ace of hearts, face down, on the sidewalk yesterday. As I bent down to flip it over, a wave of relief washed over me - que cartaza! What a card to find! A slightly scuffed (re) emergence of love, a cheeky amulet, an emotional beginning. 

I have so much I could write about love, from CA7RIEL’s vest composed entirely of plush Te Amo hearts on their Tiny Desk with Paco Amoroso, to the lust-infused soup Tita prepares in Como Agua Para Chocolate that causes her sister Gertrudis to gallop off into the horizon making love with a rebel soldier on horseback.

I could write about the silver chapitas (dog tags) I found as I packed for -yet another- move, engraved with teenage confessions of an everlasting love and accompanied by a carefully-folded photo from a quinceañera on color printer paper. I could also write about burning CDs, or the iconic careteles, those hand-painted banners often seen on residential streets in Buenos Aires, strung from telephone pole to telephone pole with messages like: LUCRECIA SOS EL AMOR DE MI VIDA PERDONAME PORFAVOR ESCRIBIME 15-5006-8734.

Like! This man most definitely messed up lol, but whatta breath of fresh air in a city like Toronto when it seems like a 24/7 effort to advocate for this standard of romance! Give me public declarations of love and oversized stuffed teddy bears over a ‘date’ to a Raptors game on St. Valentine’s any day! (Real story..)

I could write about empalago - an untranslatable word that refers to that which is so sweet it’s too sweet and how much I miss things being too sweet! How much I miss a home-made chocotorta, or an enthusiastic cheek-kiss as a greeting, or saying ‘I love you’ prematurely instead of being so scared to come off as “invasive” or “too much” that any possibility of relating with the outside world slowly rots away.

PDA and grand gestures aside, I do confess that the love that is sustaining me the most right now is quiet, intimate, matter-of-fact. It’s the Whatsapp calls and neverending voice notes from long-distance friends and family that always seem to come at a perfect time. It’s the playfulness, the cariño, the wordless I got you. 

I’ve had songs and poems written for me, drawings dedicated, buses and planes taken. I’ve also had my heart shattered into a billion pieces, many times over. I’ll share these stories one day, but for now I simply hold space for gratitude, and for love, as we continue to row through dulce de leche.

If you’re still here, thanks for reading <3