You were cold on the way back from the club, so I gave you my jumper and put your soft hands in between mine. You tugged at the knitted snowman and said the snowflakes on my jumper were cute but I thought it was embarrassing. I don’t usually take someone home. I was taller than…
A few years ago, I was in college feeling exactly as you probably do today: I had no idea why I was there, why I was learning Algebra, and what I should do in the future. I always heard people say that life was hard, money was not easy to make, and that I should…
They all want me except you. Why can’t you look at me like they do? They all say my kisses are the best. How could you resist them with my body pressed against your chest? You said you missed me and kissed me on the forehead, But you didn’t want to have me in your…
In Budapest, you can feel the pressure of a dictatorial, nationalist regime, who tries to alter the past to its own benefit. But there are activists who don’t give up on keeping alive the respect for the victims of the history of a country who seems to have forgotten its legacy. We stayed at a…
I recently replied to a tweet about the reluctance of sexual assault victims to make police reports. In my reply, I mentioned that I’d been sexually assaulted three times in my lifetime, and that I had never reported any of my attackers. I felt no unease or discomfort in disclosing the fact that I’ve been…
As I entered barefoot in that room of tiled floor, I felt the world fall at my feet when I confronted that look. His great brown eyes could melt the coldest of hearts. His olive-toned skin spread the same Indian heat that was impregnated in our clothes and in the air. From time to time,…
November 2016 I opened my car’s trunk to pack the backpack, in which I kept the oxygen bottle, and found my surfing wetsuit. I stood there, paralyzed, staring at him, as if I had ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in years, and with whom I wanted to remember moments lived before, in…
Of all that is past, you were the only fragment of time that deleted me from history. Deleting a message I didn’t like doesn’t mean I forgot I read it, and it doesn’t make me believe it hurts less, either. But I respect it, like I try to respect everything I don’t understand. I grew…
This post was originally published in Portuguese on Expedição B. on the 23rd of January 2017 I’ve always had a lot of headaches, since I was a kid. Later came the migraines with everything else that comes with it. At the age of 17, during national exams season of my 2nd year of high school, the characteristics…
How much do you hate your anxiety? How much, when it’s so heavy that it makes your shoulders tense up? How much, when you don’t feel safe in your own body, or at peace in your own mind? How much, when it makes your throat tighten up and your morale crumble down? When your legs…
This post was originally published in Portuguese on Expedição B. on the 22nd of December 2016 Today I met a 60-something lady who never fell in love. She’s married, has kids, and is one of those people full of light, that hug you just by looking at you. When she was a teenager, her parents arranged her…
A living being is complex. It requires molecules, atoms, particles, and an invisible immensity of lines and in-between lines, which pass unnoticed to the naked eye. Functioning doesn’t require ingenuity, until there’s a short circuit. Turning the winch doesn’t harden the muscle, until it makes it hurt. Breathing is easy, until it isn’t. The disease…
This article was originally published on The Inertia on May 29th 2015 It was early in the morning when I first got to the beach. A heavy mist hung over the ocean, and you could hardly see the set waves break out the back–it all seemed so far away. Through the mist, you could make…
Imagine, just for a second, what would happen if life, as you’ve been living it up to this point, completely stopped in its tracks. I don’t mean it in the sense that you’ve hit a dead-end or that you need to take a moment to catch your breath. The road’s still quite visibly in front…
Since I’m a young kid, I’ve always wanted to improve myself. How don’t you want to be better every single day? Tony Robbins says that happiness comes from progress. The only feeling worse than waking up without a challenge, is to look backward and realize that you’re not better than you were a year, a month,…
This post was originally published on Ary News on 21st March 2015 Raj or Raju Bhai, as he is known, is the principal caretaker of the National Museum of Pakistan in Karachi, and happens to be a Hindu. He’s been looking after the museum for 35 years and his father held the position before him. The…