I look at myself, but who is this “I” that looks? I pass through the phases of my life as if walking through a house of mirrors, each reflection more distorted, more demanding than the last. There is a fatigue that is not of the muscles, but of the very soul—a heavy, silent dust that settles over my spirit.
I am getting old. My skin is no longer a surface; it is a map, a topography of scars and creases, the marks of time written in a language I am only now learning to read. Every wrinkle is a word, every spot a punctuation mark in a story that refuses to end.

I stand at the window of my own existence and wonder: when will this planet—this dense, pulsating thing—finally get better? I search for a sign in the grit of the street, in the indifferent blue of the sky, but the world remains stubbornly itself. It is a terrifying neutrality.

Beatriz Esmer