All lives begin before birth: there’s a mother rereading a list of names before bedtime, indecisive, or a father imagining the face of a baby who doesn’t yet exist. There are years of desire, wilting in silence, or the frenzied rhythm of regret. There’s peace—paid for dearly—after a long pause, or a dark room demanding to be occupied.
There’s the wait that will put an end to unbearable solitude, or perhaps the fear of a new presence arriving to disrupt everything. No matter what, all lives begin before birth. I would’ve liked to have thought the same of my own life, but I’m convinced that my tiny body, curled up in a dark corner of my mother’s womb, was incapable of arousing any feeling in anyone.
It took me an entire life, twenty-four short years, a life as fleeting as a shooting comet, to be able to say this without pain. I wonder about the period when I was sick without knowing it, about how life sails along peacefully when you ignore sadness. My story is also about that: about time.
About time you can’t get back, because you can’t ever get back time. And about fear, too, because one day you’re afraid of one thing and the next day you’re afraid of everything. And surely this story of mine shows that when someone comes up to you and tells you, don’t grow up too quickly, brio and beauty fade so fast, you must know they speak the truth.
The people I loved are sleeping. But perhaps not Rita and, resting on the windowsill of the apartment in the city, she tries to convince herself that nothing can shatter her world’s equilibrium. From the window she sees people she doesn’t know.
Someone returning home after a long day looks up at the sky before opening their door, as if making a wish. They find the blackness vaguely overwhelming. Or someone sees the light on in Rita’s room and their eyes meet for a second, from a distance, observing one another with astonishment.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
