I long to live in someone’s memory, to leave a footprint on the fragile glass of another soul’s duration. And yet, what is memory after all? A ghost that haunts a hallway, a breath misting on a cold window before it vanishes entirely. I long to live upon a hill, high and exposed to the fierce, indifferent wind, where the sky feels vast enough to swallow the quiet terror of existing. And it doesn’t matter that I know I never will, because the longing itself is already a form of possession, a sharp and burning ache that proves I am alive.

We skim the surface of things, terrified of the depth. But tonight, there is a sudden, blinding clarity. I raise my glass to the good things in life—not the grand architectures we build to outlast us, but the raw, trembling instants. The sudden warmth of a hand, the smell of rain hitting dry earth, the quiet astonishment of being. We are not here for long, this much is certain, a brief flicker of light between two eternal silences. Yet, within this dizzying brevity, there is time enough for a song, clumsy and unfinished, and some dark, sweet wine to warm the throat.

And as time runs away like water through desperate fingers, slipping past us while we try to name it, I will not look back with bitterness. I will turn around, look the fleeing shadows in the eye, and say that the good things in life—the love, the pain, the hunger, the simple grace of breathing—were all mine…

© Beatriz Esmer