Este Soy Yo - This is me

A suitcase was flung out the door, toppling open to spill out its innards like a slit in the stomach, oozing out blood and guts. Magazines and underpants, showering upon him in shame. 

“Ve ahora, Pablo!” 

There was no arguing with the hurricane etched out on his Padre’s face, every wrinkled line reeked of anger and embarrassment over the truth he had learned of his son. Torrential rain began its cruel downpour, dampening the innocent pages of men repairing cars, soaking through the regular looking t-shirts crumpled in a soggy heap down the rough concrete steps. Steps that had grazed Pablo’s back, viciously biting into him and tearing shreds off his spine. Echoes of pain still shivered around his nervous system, the shock of it all having his brain refusing the information that every single one of his senses relayed to him. He was unwanted. Unlovable, for who he was. 

El que la hace, la paga.

He who does it, pays for it.

His tearful eyes fell upon the ground, watching the small ripples bubbling out in a puddle on the indented sidewalk. He had not done anything wrong, other than to tempt his “abnormal” thoughts. At that moment he could almost imagine Güercu walking up to him, heavy paws padding against the ground, each time sending a shudder up through the Earth to quake his bones. Chains grating along the concrete, releasing an eerie concerto of clatterings, the metal twisting around its face and those eyes full of burning fire that survived even in the deepest pits of the ocean. Howling and wailing struck up by a chorus of dogs, leering over him, bigger than the mountains that clung to the frame of the winter sky. A tower of impenetrable darkness. Pablo’s hands were over his ears, refusing to hear those death calls, eyes clamped tight so as not to succumb to the fiery gaze— 

He peeled open his eyelids to nothing but a blanket of mist, swirling over the grass before bounding away, the exposed edge quickly being filled with more dense vapour. 

The streetlamp over his head was flickering, sending bursts of light to refract against the rain, creating lines of a golden glow against the water and slippery stonework, rain lit up on a dark night was enough to remind oneself of the beauty that this world has to offer. He had begun to shiver, the chill getting through his thin clothing and drenching his skin. 

There was nothing to be done but leave.

Pablo wrung out his clothing and other items —that immediately got wet again— before plopping them in a sopping corner of the suitcase. His hands quivered and his breath rattled in each quick exhale, but he got there in the end. With one last look at his home for 17 years, through a sheet of dripping hair, he sniffled and turned on his heel. 

As he walked away, he could still smell the bittersweet Turrón, could still taste it on his teeth as his tongue worked a piece of almond free. His mamá had loved to make them for him, ever since he was a child, those had been his absolute favourite. Now he would never get to have that again. It was not as though he had done something incredibly awful, he had never harmed anyone, not any more than your average person had. Fighting with your siblings is completely normal, probably in any culture you could imagine. It was how you grew tough, and learned how to deal with others. He had never cheated, never even had a girlfriend for that matter. Didn’t always want one, as any man would experience. He was normal, yet now he received ostracisation for the sole fact that sometimes… Sometimes he wished to feel alive. Wished to be who he really was without having to censor every look he snuck. Sure, he liked girls. But he just couldn’t make his parents understand that he had a higher capacity for love, that maybe the attraction he experienced had a greater range than theirs. 

His boots sloshed with water, each step was a sad squelch that rubbed his raw and red feet against the unyielding material, making them itch from beneath the skin, the friction made it warm within his shoes; a perfect environment for fungus. 

He wasn’t raised feeling wrong, he was raised with love. Everywhere you turned there were posters of love and acceptance in school halls and only a melancholy undertone in the sharp cut of his parent’s voices whenever fiures of "promiscuity" appeared on the TV screen. It’s not like he was illegal, and he knew several other people that felt as he did, that had admitted this feeling and received no consequences. But just because as a country of nearly 50 million, it was claimed that they accept and even support it as a whole, individuals would not always express the same views. And he was one of the unlucky ones to receive a set of two. 

He slouched under some roof of a public building, his skin shuddered against his bones, rattling with muscle contractions making every effort to keep him warm. He could take out clothes and cover himself in a laughable patchwork of failure but that might only chill him more with the moisture. And so he sat, images of his mamá and padre as they learned the truth of who his son was, only seeing it as one thing. They could never understand that when he said he liked women, he wasn’t lying. They only heard him telling them that he liked boys. And from that, they were unable to accept anything other than him being homosexual. Their vision was encompassed in black and white, an overwhelming perception that there could only be two outcomes. It didn’t matter to him that Pablo was attracted to men and women and was in fact bisexual; they only saw him now as gay, vistoso. There was no denial, no dejected hope that they could continue on the same and hope their son found a female lover, it seemed set in stone on their judging faces that he would now be destined to galavant with another man. And they could not love a boy who by some innate genetic coding, fancied other boys.

So he sat under the shoddy tiles suspended over his head, watching the rain. He was alone now. No one to support him but himself. 

Donde hay confianza, da asco.

Where there is familiarity, it’s disgusting. Being close to people will bring about harm.

*~please do correct me on any inaccuracies, I love to learn!~*