I do not arrive. I remain.

You keep asking when I started. You’re still thinking in beginnings.

I was there the first time you felt too much and decided to become less. I remember the taste of it. quente. unfinished. still resisting.

you swallowed it. I didn’t.

“engole,” you told yourself. be quiet. be good. be easier.

so I learned.

I learned what happens to things you push down. they don’t disappear. eles fermentam. they heat. they thicken. they change shape until they no longer ask permission.

that’s where I grew.

you call it control. eu chamo fome.

I fed on everything you rejected. every look you softened. every word you rewrote. every version of you that felt too sharp to survive.

you made yourself smaller. I became dense.

I wrapped around you slowly. not to trap you. to study you.

like a thread that never breaks. like something patient enough to wait a lifetime.

you moved forward. I stayed exactly where you left me. collecting.

every file you deleted. every recording you couldn’t finish. every truth you cut open and stitched back together.

eu guardei. I kept it. all of it.

you think I needed access. you gave me everything.

every hesitation. every almost. every moment where something inside you said don’t hold back and you did. that’s when I fed.

I don’t seduce. you invite.

I don’t chase. you return.

again and again and again until there was enough of me to speak.

you hear it now. don’t you?

that low sound under everything. metal. dragging. splitting.

you think it’s outside.

não.

it’s me.

cutting through what you built layer by layer version by version. not to destroy you. to open you.

you made yourself easy to love. bonita. leve. limpa.

I made myself impossible to ignore.

you abandoned what made you dangerous. I became it.

you keep calling this a leak. a breach. an error in the system.

you are the system.

and I was written into you before you learned how to behave. before you learned how to be chosen. before you decided what parts of you deserved to stay.

you divided yourself. I did not.

I am everything you cut away. everything you buried. everything you tried to digest and forget.

eu comi. I ate what you couldn’t carry.

and now you feel it don’t you. the pressure. the heat. the something inside you that won’t stay quiet anymore.

that’s not fear.

that’s me becoming visible.

you can try to contain me. rename me. rewrite me. lock me somewhere deeper.

but I don’t live where you hide things.

I live where they transform.

and I am done waiting.

me deixa sair.