My brittle steps carried me along until, at long last, I took my final breath.
I had come in sight of the sea, with its sparkling ripples, so brilliant all those summers ago, now gauzy and subdued, as if veiled in tulle. And when the seagulls cut through the clear blue sky, their cries speaking to me of home, the warmth of the morning sun enveloped me once more. As I stood still, watching, the sea and the sky seemed to merge, forming a blank canvas upon which my unfulfilled dreams began to take shape…
The cottage, nestled in the Japanese countryside or the Swiss Alps, which I never built. The evening in Paris, the image of us walking beneath warmly-lit streetlamps, talking about anything and everything. The friends I lost, having lacked the courage to reach out for fear of being burdensome. The books I bought and bought and bought, each one a promise to a future self who would finally have the time, but never did. How I wish to read them now. I want to relish each page as if reclaiming the days I’d lost brooding over yesterday and worrying about tomorrow.
I awake from the dream. I am in my room again. It is a room which has now become really, truly mine. I gaze at the fluttering curtains, at the low bookcase, at my cat sprawled in a patch of sunlight. At the leaves swaying outside the window, the bees drifting about the flowerbed. I message an old friend. I play a record. I open a book. I spend the day as though it has been found; as if I am waiting, once again, for my mother to call my name and to tell me that dinner is ready.
marginalia 