Dear Fabio

This is probably the last letter I write to you and the last coffee I drink in the armchair of your private study. It is ironic, in this very place we exchanged the most solemn demonstrations of affection together and yet today I have nothing solemn to offer you. I imagine you will be a bit confused, but read on and I promise you will find some meaning in the next few lines, that is my great longing.

You're probably rubbing the subtle hairs on your chin and gently tapping your knee with your fingertips, as you usually do when you're nervous. That innocent gesture that used to captivate me and that today I see for the last time on the canvas of my memory. You knew it, I told you two nights ago when we stared at each other and my eyes gave me away. At that moment, despite the absence of words, we both understood that that look was the prelude to this farewell.

I'm leaving and I don't know what my destiny will be. Even if I knew I would not tell you, for knowing you as only I know you, you would not hesitate to pursue me and catch up with me even if my new abode were in the ninth hell. I'm leaving without suitcases and with the sweetest company, don't pretend to be surprised, you knew this too. Carmen and I are best friends since childhood. I'm sure you're reproaching me now that you are too, and you're right, I don't deny it. But for a long time now we are no longer children and life has become more bitter than we can bear.

Don't look at me like that, although I don't have you in front of me I know that you are now crossing these lines with your green eyes. You also chose once and you know it's not easy. There was a time when you went out of your way for her, for her pink lips and her honey smile, for her eyes of the universe; and me, I survived in the shadows of that ephemeral romance, without knowing for sure which of the two was the reason for my burning jealousy. The difference is that you chose me, and I chose her.

Don't ask yourself questions, don't try to figure it out. There's no backstory, no secret explanations, it's as simple as you see it. Carmen and I love each other, but the world we belong to is not ready for our love, so we leave. Burn this letter, spare yourself the horror of someone else reading it. Burn it, for if it were found, it would be a great shame for you and persecution and death for us.

I can tell you no more, I am running out of words and time; and my coffee cup is already empty. I leave you this letter on your golden table, in front of the picture you painted last November, where I look as beautiful and slender as your eyes see me and I hold my favorite cup of coffee. I hope you also burn that painting, so you won't have to look at it every day and imagine that at that moment in the painting I was thinking the words I am writing to you now. I hope love does not blind you to keep both.

Saray wiped her tears as she finished reading the letter she had just found behind the painting. She looked at the beautiful woman on the canvas, it gave her the impression that she was looking at her too. It was 2009 and Franco's Spain was only a dark chapter in the history of his country, but some things had not changed. Saray had been married for a year to a man she did not love, she had done it to please her bourgeois parents, her desires were different, she was in love with her friend Lucia.

She folded the letter and put it in her pocket, looked again at the painting that the day before her husband had bought at a garage sale, just for her who was a coffee lover. She took down the painting and walked through the door, not sure of anything.

Saray didn't know it yet, but that letter and Mariela's imposing gaze in the painting had given her the courage she needed to leave with Lucia, far from her family, who were the enemies of true love.

_{Original content by the author.
Resources: Tablet ZTE E10Q
Manipulated images from Pixabay
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Translated with Deepl.com
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