Sublime

Truths everyone should know, yet somehow, even though they lay exposed all around, seemed to lie in secret like the seeds.

Estelle was thinking about another author now, one who almost a hundred years ago wrote that your children aren’t your children, they’re the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.

“Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa.”

I went to her first. I thought that if I brought her to the afterlife now, her calf could find her waiting. If that was a comfort of some kind I would give it.

the secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.

Her aunt carried a presence, a stillness like that which precedes a storm, when the ants pour over the ground and the birds find shelter and stop singing to wait for the rain. No one dared speak out against her for fear she knew how to set curses.

I tell myself she was a luxury, like fruit out of season, lucky to have but temporary.

Me divirto na companhia dela e admiro seu atrevimento e sua esperteza de mulher de Copenhagen. Na frente dos pequenos cafés, os desempregados esperam o tempo passar. Quando minha mãe passa, eles assobiam por entre os dedos, mas ela os ignora. “Eles podiam pelo menos ficar em casa”, diz ela, “como seu pai.”

Living was living. The price was guilt and shame.