It was a discovery of the skin, a slow peeling of the soul until I reached the bone of the matter. For the first time, I did not ask for the lightning strike of bliss or the vertigo of joy. I asked only for this: contentedness. It is a heavy, silent thing.

In Ouro Preto, the light does not merely shine; it spills. A soft ochre milk overflowing across the floorboards, drowning the wood in a liquid gold that knows no rush. I looked at the kitchen counter and felt the shock of the ordinary. A bowl of fruit. A warm cup of coffee. Leftover soup. I saw them and I trembled, for they were enough. To realize that the object exists is a miracle; to realize it is sufficient is a grace.

I have the words. They are my only guests, my only certainties. Even if the world dissolves into a white mist, I will have the memories, those translucent creatures that live in the marrow.

“I remember the creak of the bed, a sound like a prayer being whispered by the wood.”

I would wake in that morning light, the air tasting of old stones and incense, and kiss his sleeping shoulder, a silent pact with the living. Then, the escape: climbing out of the sheets to find the back of the house, where his mother sat. We shared the coffee and the silence. I would pull my sweater tight, a second skin against the chill, watching the birds weave the sky together while the cool water lapped against the stones. It was a liquid time. A time without clocks.

Is it real? Or is it a dream that has gained enough weight to stay? My memories are full of holes, like a piece of lace held up to the sun. There is more absence than substance, yet the essence, that stubborn, leftover perfume of existence, remains.

I am finally at peace with the abstract. I no longer claw at the memories to prove their lineage. Whether they stepped out of a dream or out of the dirt of Minas Gerais does not matter. What matters is the reassurance of the circle: the sun will rise, the light will return, and history will repeat its quietest lessons.

There is a holiness in the repetition. The light will always spill like milk. The memories will always return as ghosts you can almost touch.

I will be happy again. You will be happy again. We are condemned to it, provided we remember that the silence is waiting for us, just behind the door, as certain as the mountains of Ouro Preto.

© Beatriz Esmer