I can't stop wasting ink on you, your name clings, suspended from the tip of my pen as I drag you over my paper, again and again. You leave a messy streak on everything you touch, the coffee stains on my tea table. And even with you gone they're still there, round reminders of what went wrong. You had the knack of making everything cluttered, always took up too much space, too large for my tiny apartment. Even now, you fill my room with mountains of crumpled notes, sonnets and elegies, novellas. Every inch of you fills my notebooks, makes the pages cramped. Nothing’s changed and I'm tired of writing about you, how you always tucked your fingers in my pockets, as though you couldn't hold me any closer. The way you sighed in your sleep. You're gone, my dear, and all you've left me with is endless cursive, odes to your lips, the way they stayed limp, suspended at your sides, did nothing to stop me from walking away. My margins are full, there is no more room to breathe, my heavy pen, the weight of your hand in mine. A thousand miles apart, and you're still bleeding all over my paper, ink running down the pages stains my finger tips blue. Our colour, my dear.

Obrigada Mariana e Professora Fátima.