ROMANCE
DE BARRIO.

First, that distant meeting in April, your dark balcony, your old garden. Later, the letters written with a feverish pulse, lying that no, swearing that yes.

A neighborhood romance, your love and mine. First a love, then a sorrow, for faults that were never ours, for faults we both had to suffer for.

Today you may be living despising me, perhaps never imagining that, unable to have you, I grieve over the pain of not knowing how to forget. Today you must be farther from me than ever, far away after so much crying. It was just because, that resentment blinded you as it did me, without seeing that in the bitterness of goodbye you were cruelly punishing your own heart. It was just because that suddenly we failed to think that it is easier to disown it all and leave than to live without forgetting.

Ashes of time, that meeting in April, your dark balcony, your old garden, the letters traced with a feverish hand, lying that no, swearing that yes. Your voice and mine return defeated, bringing back, in tones of horror, the faults that were never ours, the faults we both had to pay for.