It is a duration that does not exist, yet it weighs. I look at the clock and see not time, but the white, vibrating marrow of silence. Can one touch the thing-in-itself before the hand moves? To seek the essence is a fatigue, a hunger that does not want to be satisfied.

Life. I say the word and it escapes me like a secret I have forgotten. It is the dog, with its wet nose and its terrifyingly pure gaze; it is the giant squid, heavy and cold in the abyss where no eye sees; it is the goldfish, a small, trapped flame in a bowl of water. All of them are it. Even the magnolia buds, closed like a fist that refuses to give. It is all a single pulse, a nausea of being, so complex that it becomes transparent.

I have twenty-six minutes left. I am sitting here, breathing, and I am afraid of the clarity. To live is not to think; it is a collective gasp, a shared heartbeat that we mistake for our own. I do not want the answer, the answer is a dead thing, a stone. I want the vibrating question, the raw nerve of the why.

The truth is not a destination. It is scattered in the patience of the petal, in the mystery of the salt water, in the unbearable loyalty of a beast that does not know it has a soul.

The minutes are dying, one by one, like small insects. And I realize: I do not want to understand.

Understanding is a form of closing the eyes. I only want to feel the grace of the enigma. To be is enough. It is almost too much.

Does the silence between the minutes frighten you, or is it where you finally feel yourself breathing?

©️ Beatriz Esmer