And now, I love the volumes of my life. Not the stories, stories are for those who fear the void, but the physical mass of existing, the heavy, sweet density of being here. I am no longer afraid of the space I occupy.

I listen. There is the adagio of my heart’s beating, a slow, rhythmic pulse that does not ask for permission to continue. It is a thick silence punctuated by blood. And then, the outside: the metronome of the rainfall, ticking away the seconds of a time that doesn’t exist, yet washes everything clean of its yesterday.

How can one expect to live, really live, with the skin open and the nerves exposed, without the welcome of the bird’s chirp in the morning? It is a small, sharp needle of joy that pricks the soul awake. Or the night’s vehement winds? I hear them pounding the window pane, demanding to be let in, demanding that I acknowledge the ferocity of the dark.

To live is to be pounded by the wind and still remain. It is a state of grace so violent it feels like a miracle. I am finally, inexplicably, home.

©️Beatriz Esmer