Translated from the Spanish original by L.G.G.
The signs were there,
but we chose to be blind.
Your laughter broke halfway,
your messages grew shorter,
your words sounded hollow.
You told me I’m fine,
and I nodded,
like someone accepting an empty gift
because they don’t know what to do with their hands.
Your eyes screamed,
but I refused to listen.
You carried the storm inside,
and I handed you calendar phrases:
it will pass,
tomorrow will be better,
don’t worry so much.
How cruel they sound now.
How useless they were.
The phone rang that afternoon.
I remember the silence before answering,
as if the world already knew
it was about to break.
A voice on the other side,
dry, trembling,
spoke your name.
Then it said hospital.
Then it said overdose.
I didn’t hear anything else.
I ran.
The ground burned beneath my feet,
the streets blurred,
and I repeated your name
like a desperate prayer.
White lights blinded me.
The smell of disinfectant
stabbed my throat.
And there you were.
A fragile body,
skin almost transparent,
your lips cracked,
your hands cold.
Around you, wires and machines
trying to anchor you to this world
when you were already far away.
I came closer.
I held your hand.
I spoke.
I begged.
I told you you weren’t alone,
to stay a little longer,
that if you opened your eyes you would find me there,
waiting,
like so many times I failed to do before.
Your eyelids trembled.
A faint gesture,
almost a smile,
like someone thanking too late,
like someone saying goodbye.
The clock froze.
Every beep from the machines
was a knife in my ribs.
Sometimes it stretched,
sometimes it broke,
and every irregular sound was a sentence.
I remembered then your summers,
your silly jokes,
the nights when you confessed your exhaustion
and I answered with hollow words.
I hated myself for not holding you tighter,
for not reading your pain between the lines.
And suddenly, silence.
The monitor fell quiet.
The doctors stopped moving.
Your chest was still.
The world too.
I screamed your name,
wept into your lap,
begged for another chance.
But you were gone.
Now I am left only with your absence.
Your empty bed.
The echo of your steps that will never return.
And that invisible phrase,
the one you never said aloud,
but that every wall in the hospital
keeps whispering to me:
“I didn’t want to die…
I just wanted someone to truly listen.”
And the most heartbreaking part,
what will haunt me forever,
is that it wasn’t the pills that killed you.
It was us,
it was all of us,
who let you scream in silence
until your voice faded away.