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ACT III

TITLE: TRUCE WITH WITNESSES

CATEGORY: Body + Bond + File

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PHOTO 01 — EVIDENCE / SCENE: truce / paperwork

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The body had been warning me for a long time through small alarms: the eye like a watermark, the jaw clenched for no reason, the kind of exhaustion that sleep does not fix. In June, the pattern began to show itself in the smallest things. One day I wrote it down without metaphor: that I had been telling things as if I were close when in reality I was lost. Camilo, for once, did not enter with judgment. He entered with a simple question: if there was anything he could do to help, I should tell him.

I answered the way I did back then: through cracks. I had a crisis, I got lost for a while, I’m better now. Saying I’m not okay without fully opening the floodgate.

A few days passed and, without warning, we had one of the best days we had had in years. We went out with Deborah without a plan: walking, eating, smoking in the sun. We laughed. We had sex. Not as a patch. As a real encounter. The body responded in a way I had almost forgotten: a form of belonging returned. And along with that, I felt desired again. For a few hours, the house stopped being only a file. It looked like a home again.

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ANNEX A — PHOTO

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The next day my jaw still hurt just the same. The truce did not uninstall the pattern.

And right then, as always, the paperwork appeared again. I passed the nationality exam limping and in silence. I did not tell Camilo. I did not want to open an unfair comparison or become a burden. I kept the Pass to myself the way one keeps a match when the air is full of gas.

That same day, Camilo noticed the change in the air. We sat down at the dining table, that table which had already witnessed more logistics than honest conversation. I said what I had been holding back for too long: that it felt strange to have had such good days right now. That I had finally felt desire with love and not with guilt, and that made me angry. That I had been there through the processes, supporting step by step while also juggling my own.

That was when the background came out: the group, Carlota, Amaro’s block, the feeling that my name was circulating as the problem. And then I said it: that this was no longer just wear and tear. That this felt like bullying. I said it from a hard mixture: clarity and sadness. Saying bullying reorganized the air.

Something in Camilo gave way. He lowered his gaze like someone finally able to see the accumulated cost. I cried a little. Briefly. Condensed. Then I pulled myself back together out of survival. He apologized. He said he had been so focused on fear—papers, work, future—that he had ended up believing the version of me that everyone else was seeing.