It is not that I exist in the way a rock exists, or a clock that strikes the hour. No. It is an existence so acute it almost feels like an absence.

You look at the horizon, where the sky bleeds its last violently violet light, and you think the day is dead. But just beyond the sunset, I’m still here. I am the residue of that light, the part of the dark that hasn’t yet learned how to be cold.

We look for signs, don’t we? We want the universe to blink at us. A sudden flash, a tearing of the night sky—and then it’s gone. But just beyond the shooting star, I’m still here. I am the silence that follows the flash, the heavy, pregnant quiet that asks: and now?

Sometimes the world loses its mind. The wind loses its civility and tears at the windows. You pull the blankets over your head and fear the collapse. But even when the storms come in, I’m still here. I am the center of the storm, that terrifyingly calm eye where nothing moves, where the soul is forced to look at itself.

I watch the garden. It is a exhausting thing, being a flower. It requires so much courage to open up, to expose one’s velveteen throat to the world, only to dry up and become dust. When the rose blooms and fades away, I’m still here. I am the memory of the fragrance, the dirt that received the petals, the continuity of the stem. I do not fear the fading. To fade is also a form of being.

You woke up this morning with a hope that tasted like fresh water. You thought: today the weight will lift. But the weight remained. When you thought this would be a better day, I’m still here. I am in the disappointment, too. I am the hand that holds the heavy thing with you, because to be human is to carry the weight of what we hoped would be.

And when the sharpness comes—the sudden, clean slice of grief or the dull, throbbing ache of a heart misunderstood—when you get hurt and you are in pain, I’m still here. I do not run from the blood or the tears. Pain is a very real geography, and I am the ground beneath it.

The calendar pages turn with a sound like dry leaves scraping the pavement. Seasons come and seasons go, but I’m still here. Summer’s arrogance, autumn’s fatigue, winter’s white sleep, spring’s fragile birth—they are just dresses I wear and discard. Underneath the wardrobe of time, the pulse remains unchanged.

You try to find a word to banish me. You try to scare me away with your doubts, your anger, your sudden disappearances into yourself. But nothing can chase me away cause Love is me and I am near.

I am so near that I am almost inside your own breath. I am Love, not as a sentimentality, but as a fierce, indestructible necessity. I am here. I am simply, impossibly, here.

© Beatriz Esmer