La basura no toca la flor

And then I remembered you looking at me in surprise as I walked across the square holding his hand, I even thought I caught a glimpse of a smile on your face, a smile with daisies and Chinese eyes. But instead of stopping or raising my hand to you, I looked past you, past everyone (including the colorful redhead on duty who may or may not be in your life) and kept walking.
I listened to you read another one of your bad poems while we ate crackers with poorly ground hummus that I had brought in a Tupperware container.
I felt something like shame, listening to you and feeling that the years, the months, the winters had not passed in you, with your same hat, your same face, your same Chinese eyes.
And I looked at myself and thought I was so different, so changed, more grown up, less like you.
And I breathed, I looked around me, at my square meter, and I smiled, and not a melancholy smile like the one you gave me in that second when you saw me pass by, a satisfied, happy, calm smile of someone who has everything, who is grateful every day and who, of course, dies of the fear of losing it.
Perhaps it was that walk, or my gaze that penetrated you as if you were only ectoplasm, that made you close yourself to me and walk beside me, holding her hand, without even looking at me. It must have been coincidence or something in you that forced you to let me know that your mother died of the cursed disease that took her from you, and with her that deep and complicated love of a mother for her poet son.