Counting

What day was it? She reached out from under the blanket and fumbled on the nightstand. Various sounds were heard. It must have been commercials that had just ended and now she was hearing some familiar chords. She thought she liked this song. Her eyes were still closed. She didn't want to leave the warmth of the bed and her dreaming just yet. She'd make coffee soon.

"The people in my life,

I sat down to count them »

The last few days were testing her endurance. Work, family, a wedding she missed... She had to get out of the house. Get someone on the phone. But who?

"The present, the absent "

It hadn't been many years since she was going out with different companies almost every night. In hangouts, in random shops. Among people with shining eyes, talking, laughing, living. That's what she wanted, that's what she needed, and that's how she was used to.

"Those who came to stay "

How many companions, indeed, had passed by her side. All with the expectation of continuity. Some friends, some more than that.

"Those who left before they were"

And there were so many of them. And she had allowed everyone to know her. More or less. The previous, the important, few moments of her life, she narrated them over and over and over again... Only, each time she reduced the time she devoted to the narration. She spared no words. She was tired of introducing herself, analyzing, talking, listening to her voice.

"And I always get a few

or I get too many"

New people, new experiences. She was finding a way to save space and time for the new. Greed for experience. Except that whatever she got, she gave back.

As she was still under the blanket, she remembered several names. Faces, smiles, she was trying to remember their voices or some scent. She caught herself smiling, frowning, teeth clenching, eyes watering.

"And it is loneliness that is urgent"

How did she manage to stay alone? So many people... Did she consider them expendable or was it the other way around? Who left first? Now she couldn't justify herself anymore. Conversations she avoided, calls she ignored. Now she no longer remembered the reasons she had used. She kept bringing people to her mind.

"I'd like to keep them"

She let them slip out of her life and the guilt returned every now and then, with a heavier burden each time. And she used to be so apathetic before… defining the people around her as bodies that trace trajectories - of different diameters - on the line of her time...

"Those who left a mark"

...the more difficult it was for her to accept that only few made bigger circles. Few had won the freedom brought by intimacy. The one she sought in every new experience.

"In a counting that opens

my old wound"

Only one voice she could not forget. Years ago, a new acquaintance and a little later its end. She brought them to mind once more. It had been days that she hadn't remembered those two moments.

"Loves that seemed valuable"

She refused to open her eyes. She refused to start her day. What day was it? She wanted to stay under the covers for a little while longer. Her heart began to beat faster. It will pass. Now another song was playing. It will pass. She would get up to make coffee. She'd make coffee soon.