The kitchen is silent, except for the bread. It sits there, a dense, unformed mystery. How many slices in a bread? I hold the knife and feel the vertigo of choice. If I cut it thin, I am a miser of moments, stretching the wheat into a transparent ghost of itself. If I cut it thick, I am a glutton for the present. The bread doesn’t care. It only waits for the edge of my will.

It depends, you see. It always depends on the hand that holds the steel.

I think of the old screen door. It is a rusted eyelid, blinking against the world. How many slams are trapped in its hinges? We want to count them, to archive the noise, but the door is silent until the impulse of the heart moves the arm. If I shut it with the violence of a soul that cannot find its center, the slam is infinite. If I let it go with a sigh, the slam is a secret. We don’t live in the house; we live in the way we enter and leave it.

The Liquid Day

How much good inside a day? The day is a bowl of clear water. It has no shape until I dip my hands into it. To live them “good” is not a moral checklist, it is a terrifying immersion. I look at the clock and see not time, but a mirror. The day is only as deep as my own capacity to drown in the “now.”

The Mirror of the Friend

And then, the most dangerous hunger: How much love inside a friend? I used to think a friend was a well I could draw from. I was wrong. A friend is a canyon. If I whisper “I love you,” the echo returns. If I give nothing, the canyon is a tomb. The love isn’t in them, waiting like a stagnant pool; it is a pulse created between us. It depends how much you give. To love is to lose the math of the self.

I am not counting the slices anymore. I am simply eating. I am not measuring the slams; I am listening to the vibration in my teeth. To exist is to realize that the “how much” is a question that only the act of living can answer.

©️ Beatriz Esmer