( BY -- enitnatsnoC oãoJ )

I was born.

There was no music.

Only a body arriving late to its own existence.

They said:

— Live.

And I obeyed.

My first mistake.

I learnt to walk to reach places I never wanted to be.

I learnt to speak to say things that meant nothing.

I learnt to love and discovered that love knows how to die.

Love, most of all.

There were beautiful days.

That is the worst part.

The sun came through the window as though it had been invited.

I laughed.

Someone laughed with me.

For a few seconds, death seemed far away.

But it was only waiting in the corridor.

Death has patience.

We have calendars.

Then I grew old.

I didn't notice when.

Perhaps it was the first photograph in which I failed to recognise the man I was.

Perhaps it was when I started saying:

“Back then…”

That word is a little gravestone.

Life insists.

It lays flowers over what is rotting.

It gives names to what is disappearing.

It puts hope over fear.

And calls all of this existence.

I used to think living meant collecting:

days, loves, mistakes, songs, wounds.

Now I know.

Living is losing with astonishing punctuality.

We lose childhood.

Then our friends.

Then our dreams.

Then someone says:

— You're different.

Of course.

I'm closer.

I am not afraid of death.

I am afraid that death will discover I spent my entire life trying not to meet it.

We have known each other for years.

It was there when I was born.

I was simply the last to notice.

I will not say that life is beautiful.

That would be a very well-dressed lie.

Nor will I say that life is sad.

Sadness is far too small to explain a body that wakes every morning knowing, without knowing, that one day it won't.

Life is

a verb trying to outlive the noun.

And we,

small animals inventing gods, poems, borders and birthdays,

keep calling the countdown

LIFE.

Until someone, somewhere,

closes our eyes

and finally

stops lying.

enitnatsnoC oãoJ