Tepidly dying

 

It's Christmas today. December 25, 2023. How many Christmases... How many Christmases in my life... But I don't even remember them. Not a single one was happy. Not even one when I was a little happier than the average. Not even one that I remember. I lived, I lived so much...that I don't even feel like I've lived. And now the end begins. I feel close to the end. It's the beginning of the end.

My memories have become so thin, they are so faint that I can't even see them anymore or hear them. They died inside me...NO! they are not dead. They are buried. They are buried under layers, one layer upon layer. Layers of black thin, impalpable matter. Impenetrable.

They lie. Here is the right word: they lie buried. They rest, deep buried. But they do not rest in peace. They are restless. They want to live. They beg for a living. Do not tolerate their status. An indeterminate condition of waiting is not their nature.

Their nature is that of a wild animal, crouching in an ambush, patiently waiting for prey. And then the nature of the leap. That feline leap, sudden, makes them re-emerge from the den in which they were huddled, Ready, hungry though.

They are like black holes in which all the information is swallowed and saved, it is not destroyed. It saves itself and is again ready to inform itself when it is time for a new state. And relive.

Soon it will be spring. The snow will melt in this part of the world. The cold will loosen its grip on the body. And maybe I will be safe. Maybe the memories won't disturb me for a while, as they disturb me in the darkness when it falls early, and the grey of the sky is one with the white of the snow covering this iced land, and the eyes become blind and cannot see where one begins or the other ends.

Maybe I'll survive this winter too. I will survive the memories of a new Christmas. Every Christmas is a transfiguration. I transfigure myself again into something older yet stronger.

Isn't stronger he who no longer fears death?

Is it the approaching death that changes the colours of the memories? Which no longer makes them so urgent but subtle, invisible and insensitive. Black, like the inscrutable darkness, that falls early in winter in this northern deserted kingdom.

And they have become so inscrutable that I pay even less attention to the discomfort they deposit in the folds of the body, and the disquiet the spirit causes to my soul, due to their suffocated screamS that implore for life.

For all these years I have taken the place of their absence. I kept them in me. I kept them alive. What will become of them when I finish. Where will they end up? And who will keep me alive as I have kept them alive?

I will watch them die tepidly, as I watch me tepidly dying