You take off your belt, your pants fall off, and my tears fall on me too. You hit me because words are no good, they have no meaning when you strengthen a home. The same hand that took two cow heads, colorful suits for my parents, today rolls up a belt and beats me. I complain little because I know that patience is the cement that strengthens the walls of a home.

You beat me until my whole blouse evaporates and I am left with two shoulder straps that hold my patience, until my hair floods the room like strands from a broken broom and you beat me because I am your wife, the one who cost you cow heads.

You hit me because words are useless, they have no meaning when strengthening a home.

My body cuts the belt in half like athletes tear the finish line in track and field, but the race doesn't end, the violence continues; you come with clenched fists in my face as if you were handing me the relay in this race of patience where I am. You hit me and I don't even cry anymore, because that is not violence, but a way to build a firm home, a home that has more value than two cow heads.

The kids lean against the door and the liquid smell of their cries spreads in the room like perfume. And as you hit me, pull me by the hair, I command the kids to shut up with a voice that comes out of a mouth blistered with boiling blood. The pictures on the walls get on my nerves and collapse on the floor with bruises from shards of glass.

You hit me and I don't even cry anymore, because that is not violence, but a way to build a firm home,...

The wire of the antenna bending like a spider's web on my body, with the flaccidity of a gymnast, hurts me a lot, but I can't cry because I know and I have learned from my parents that patience is the cement that strengthens the walls of a home. You hit me with all the force that diverts the sense of blood from your veins and the ring comes off my finger and I start looking for it under the table, the stove, in the feet of the curtains and you don't stop hitting me; I feel with my fingernails all around looking for the ring because the boiling swelling of my eyes makes me blind; I find the ring in the middle of broken plates and I put it back on my finger because we are still a couple?

You hit me with all the force that diverts the sense of blood from your veins and the ring comes off my finger...

You no longer have a belt, all the chairs have unscrewed on my head, the clenched fists have grown tired, the kicks are all fallen like dry branches, the antenna wire is in shreds and peeling. And yet you keep hitting me with scraps of insults that you pull out from under the rug and stick needles of saliva and spit in my face. You hit me because words are useless, they have no meaning when you are strengthening a home.