"First, do no harm" - 

But I will.

Not by accident.

Not with rage.

But with precision.

With purpose.

With love that cuts deeper than kindness.

They think pain is the end.

But I know better. Pain is the door.

And I am the key.

I don’t rush, I build 

Every look, every breath,

a step closer

to the edge they didn’t know they needed.

And when they fall, it’s not fear in their eyes.

It’s freedom.

Because in my hands,

they don’t have to be strong.

They don’t have to pretend.

They break,

and I hold the pieces

not to fix,

but to show them who they are

beneath the lie of comfort.

You call it cruelty.

I call it truth.

I know what it means

to crave the shiver,

to worship the wince,

to taste the iron heat of blood

and feel more alive in that moment

than in a thousand soft silences.

To take control

and give it back

twisted, burning, whole.

And still,

when it’s over,

I don’t run.

I stay.

I watch.

I heal.

Because I need both:

the fracture, and the stitch.

The scream, and the stillness.

The blood that spills,

and the hands that press it back in.

This isn’t about hurting.

It’s about seeing.

Completely.

And being seen.

It was a friendship that defied straight lines, as if sculpted by his (Gaudí’s) imagination, a sinuous, unpredictable structure. It couldn’t be outlined with simple words, just as curves cannot be reduced to technical blueprints. It was intimate and free, a refuge built without plans, where every detail was born of shared intuition. 

Our connection pulsed with a rough organic energy, as though nature itself had conceived it. We were neither “amanti” nor friends in the conventional sense; we were a bold equilibrium between the emotional and the carnal, between the ephemeral and the eternal. 

Labels could confine us as: “friends with benefits,” “amigos que se besan,” “un-fair-players”. But what we couldn’t be condensed into a single word. It was a mosaic of moments, like shattered tiles brought together to form a unique and unrepeatable whole. 

Its magic lay in its freedom and rebellion: we architect a connection where tradition couldn’t breathe, where rules suffocated before they could be spoken. Every touch, every stolen glance, every half-smile stretched taut like a parabolic arch, holding up something that shouldn’t have been able to stand—but did. 

We moved between the concrete and the abstract, between the wrought iron of the tangible and the stained glass of the spiritual. Like his works, our friendship wasn’t meant to be understood—only felt. We needed no clear purpose or norms; we were art in its purest form, shaped by our hands, our laughter, and our doubts. 

And so, our friendship was: a refuge, an unfinished masterpiece, free and unique. A sanctuary and a battleground, beautiful in its defiance, grotesque in its honesty. A quiet rebellion against the straight lines the world demanded of men like us. Our Casa Batlló, standing crooked and glorious, a place only we knew how to inhabit—and only we dared.

I arrived in Paris like a candle someone forgot to blow out — flickering, low, but still holding on. I brought with me the ash of old flames, the scent of familiar rooms, the weight of a name spoken too many times by mouths that never truly saw me. I came with grief dressed as luggage. With silence folded between my clothes. I told myself I came to study, but in truth, I was running — from love that held me too tightly, from family ties wrapped around my ribs, from a version of myself I had outgrown but didn’t know how to leave behind.

The city didn’t open her arms to me. She watched me from the windows. Uninterested. Indifferent. I landed in a world locked by a virus, and that first room — white walls, still air, shadows at noon — became my cocoon. A fragile one. I whispered to it more than I did to people. I remember saying to no one, “Este cuarto es muy pequeño para las cosas que sueño.” I could feel the dreams pressing against the walls, begging for sky.

Those first weeks were a kind of dying. A soft, quiet burial of a self I had depended on. I cried like rain against glass. I missed the sound of my language echoing in warm kitchens. I missed the gravity of touch, the comfort of names that knew me. I was not ready to be alone — but alone is where I found the mirror.

And then summer arrived — slow, golden, forgiving.

The city opened like a flower. Its streets breathed again, and so did I. One afternoon, I walked without knowing where I was going. That’s how rebirth happens sometimes — not with ceremony, but with footsteps. I wandered into a version of myself I hadn’t met before. Not constructed, but uncovered. And from that uncovering, he emerged.

Valère.

Not a mask. Not a character. A truth that had been buried under expectation, tradition, and fear. Valère wasn’t born in Paris. He was exhaled. Pulled from the quiet ruins of everything I thought I had to be.

He moved differently. Slower. Certain. Like someone who had danced with ghosts and learned their language. He didn’t ask to be loved — he carried love in the way he stood, in the way he took up space without apology. He dressed in color. He laughed at the version of himself that used to shrink. He forgave the boy who needed saving, and in doing so, became the man who didn’t.

Valère doesn’t erase the past. He wears it. Like cologne. Like memory. Like a scar that doesn’t ache anymore, but still glows under the right kind of light.