Numb

When I came into the world (or the world came to me), the first sign of my life was my mother's death.

At that most crucial moment, my mother turned cold. She rolled past me like a ball of translucent snow crystals, disappearing like an empty garden into some past history.

My mother (my mother) had hair as black as death. Dreams of her always ended with ravens and rooks rustling together, forming a floating circle, flying from holes in the ground and filling everything visible in the sky.

I opened my eyes deeply, knowing that enough tears had gathered in them to fill the entire unknown universe around me, where my immobile toys, arranged in a sickly and illogical order against the wall, lay alongside everything that already lay in baskets, on shelves, on the floor, not mine but that of other boys like me, or perhaps even quite different ones. Perhaps even among them would be a Judas who had his own mother.

I felt the clairvoyance of a child permeate all that was essential, like the envy of possession.

To stop myself from filling with tears, I mentally recounted the unknown streams and brooks, because if I cleansed all my toys with tears, I would have to wash Jesus' feet, that's what this man I hate told me, because this man's god had given my mother this death.

On that night, when someone spent the weight of light in the farthest corner of a place I couldn't enter, I pondered the world I'd come to, or it had come to me, and when I reached the beginning, the crows and rooks reappeared.

In the photograph, my mother smiles at someone, but you can see death in her eyes, colorless, floating and there, because I already know, but she didn't notice.

With each passing year, the gray of her face heals more clearly in the photograph, slowly fading away like a scar or the prognosis of a short life.

The doctor says that death has no smell and is inevitable, and that there's some wisdom in it.

My mother wanted to listen to her and desperately wanted to rest in the abundance of every whisper and suggestion, and nothing could stop her now. Not even me.

Everything around me has sharp edges; when I get close enough to touch it, it cuts my hands, cuts my fingers, and always, as if by magic, transforms from a wound into a brown growth, with infected blood flowing through narrow channels.

More than once, I've seen drowned saints, demons, flies, slain soldiers, and my mother, whose naked body bounces against the banks of my veins, drifting inside me, swim in my blood.

The doctor says this pill will teach my mother to swim.

And then it becomes her. I was 25 when I became pregnant, consciously.

I had no interest in telling anyone else (presumably him) about my happiness.

A belly where another world is created, a mystery of its contents, where a woman is like a plant in which fruit grows.

I will never forget that dawn when I already knew that the man, by touching me and drawing me toward him, by tensing his body, had filled me with something alien, so distant and unknown that no language of meaning could translate it.

The word became flesh—"Oh fuck, I feel good, oh how I feel good!"—fertilization echoed within me. I never saw him again.

I never had a plan for the duration of my life. I never had time to live my life so that someone who would come after me wouldn't have to improve my life secretly from themselves.

After death, I went to paradise, which I never believed in while on earth.

Monday. I had a dream that I was a woman with perfectly proportioned bodies and smooth legs with small feet. For those like me, masters of form-recreation drew inspiration, and from it, breasts are like the sound of a tuned instrument from a time when perfection and harmony were found in all living things created from the heavens.

I saw myself bathing in a pure mountain river. Naked and perfect in movement, as cold water pierced my fingers, drenching me in drops and flowing back into the river. My buttocks were full of color and united, my back even and connecting delicate shoulders, from which grew hands that now, touching my belly, descended between my thighs.

Over time, the dream became a cause for excitement as I looked at my face.

Between my night-like hair and the stand of my delicate neck, on the left side, below my eye, in the circle of my cheek, someone had cut a large hole, through which a green sprig of mistletoe clearly peeked. A parasite.

This time, I looked at myself as if I had moved on, a moment before a kiss.

But something drew me to her. Everything that had previously intrigued me about her and could be sensed was seemingly pushed aside, and only the necessary anger emerged.

Anger that this woman was so utterly ugly. That nothing she could give me would compare to her ugliness.

The river spilled over the rocky bed. The first stone, over which many anticipated years had rolled, wet and heavy, struck her knee, which, feeling the force, bent slightly inward and tilted her forward.

Very quickly, the second stone, as if released from similar drops, broke her collarbone and washed the previous pain from her delicate body. The third crushed her head, and the fourth oozed it.

I had a dream in which, holding a huge hook of a stone, I smashed and pierced the head of an ugly woman.

Weary, I wiped my hands on my robes and sat on the bank.

From my traveling bag, I took bread, divided it in half, made a sign, and began my supper alone.

With a stick or a crumb of bread, I drew the sign of a fish in the sand.

They were the same. Created as if in defiance of what usually arises from humanity, where the physicality of elements becomes an image, in every bodily rest and movement, it was impossible to recreate even the slightest differences.

They contained each other in an identical gaze and feeling of all the forces of Mother or Father Nature. As if dissolved in a gold-diamond cup of liquid, they evaporated through a single process of riddle and answer.

If one were king, the other would have to be as well. Curly locks of leather-colored hair stretched over their heads gave off the same light.

Large blue eyes intersected with the same green and lush shapes of the ever-delicate season.

Days of growing up, failures and learning, love and friendship always pushed them through the same corridors, which wasn't surprising—they were the same.

When one fell, no moment longer than a single moment could be lost in life, and the other fell.

Laughter brushed across their delicate lips at the same time as tears, but rather, they were far from worries, enjoying the day's offerings and resting in the sleep of a deep and peaceful night.

Nothing had previously indicated that someone like them would ever appear in the world.

No alignment of the stars, no prophets in the scriptures, had foreseen that two identical people would fill the world.

A shared resolve that this would never change, and that forever, even by discovering the most secret knowledge, they would never allow themselves to be separated.

They were in love, like the intended beginning of all of us humans.

To discover, to fill someone with themselves, to fulfill someone within themselves, and to remain, even if they departed.

The happiness of one was immediately contained in the identical joy of the other.

On a warm night, when the sweet fruits of summer were growing in the gardens and the animals and birds had already found their homes from a distant land unknown to anyone, for few had dared to go and live there, a mute old man arrived and, knowing his destination, knocked without fear or apprehension at their door.

From his short, dusty robe, his familiarity with the traveler's habits, and a glance at the things touched by unusual comfort, everyone knew he was a sage.

Few sages had ever visited their city, and those who had left behind only uncertainty and fear.

This was one thing this city experienced, where each season was more delicate than the last.

Animals lived here and produced fruits unlike any other in the land.

The animals were wild, and the fruits were tartly sweet.

His parents, sharing the happiness bestowed upon them, welcomed him into their spacious roof.

The sage indicated his story with a wave of his hand or created stories, filling it completely with his aged body.

The signs the old man used to describe the distant land were unknown to anyone in the city, and although the wisest had gathered, no one knew the language.

Words seemed to dissolve in his signs, for they had no meaning, and indeed, disturbed anyone who spoke. Therefore, the interpreters departed without transforming any sign into a human word.

When another delicate season replaced the previous one, the old man departed.

In his own language, he wrote clearly on thin, crumpled tissue paper and left it on the neatly made bed—media vita in morte sumus (in living we are dead).

The boys grew up, and one's happiness was always contained in the other's identical joy.

Wandering through the roots of the city, one thought, "This is our wisdom, let us be like the sage," and immediately the other took this thought into himself.

When, on the porch of their house, beyond the circle of the moon, a nameless star against the backdrop of the galaxy foretold midnight, one of them decimated its light from his tongue with a knife, and the other, a moment later, did the same.

The silence of every sign is worth never speaking of it in words again.

The parents, sharing the happiness they had been given, understood the silence of their sons.

The street stretched in a narrow serpentine upward. At its very peak, I glimpsed the silhouettes of people, which gave me the certainty that I was heading towards the goal of my journey, and this was, after all, the place I was seeking and desperately longing to find.

In my mind, or rather, in all of it, I remembered every detail of the words, the reason I had been wandering for so long. It contained a detailed description of how to reach this place and what it meant to me.

However, not everything was as simple as it was there.

I already thought I had been misled and deceived.

If it weren't for the fact that I was already here, I would still be inclined to disbelieve.

Throughout these days of my journey, my life and everything connected with it have been put to the test many times.

Yesterday, for example, during a conversation with a stranger (who was trying to prove he was my friend), he pointed me in a completely different direction. If I hadn't discerned his intentions, I would never have made it here.

The day before yesterday, the wind was deliberately blowing from east to west, which meant I couldn't determine my location relative to this place.

But that no longer matters, now that I'm here.

A few more minutes and the purpose of my journey will wash away all this nightmarish fear and anxiety.

I was most afraid that this place didn't exist. That the memory of these words, though perhaps true, only described an unreal and imagined human desire, like in books or poetry I'd read. Then, when I determined that this was unlikely, because the words in my memory were neither literature nor poetry, I felt so weak and uncouth that I wouldn't get here.

Besides, what's there to ponder now? I see this place. A moment ago, I would have had to be Thomas to believe, but today, even if God told me he hadn't risen, I wouldn't believe it and would consider it a lie, since I'm already here.

I am here. I am.

I don't know now what was more difficult: remembering those words or coming to terms with their meaning. Well, yes, I took the first step, selling everything, and that helped me believe I couldn't go back. I had to find this place, because the past was already sealed.

What a wonderful feeling, knowing that it was about to happen—a few steps, a moment?

Now I can only think and complain that I did it so late, that I spent so long pondering whether to leave what I had and come here.

If I had experienced what has happened now earlier, I stand here, how much less misery I would have saved myself and others in life.

Besides, no one can know which path is right, which is true and which is not, which one can follow and which, by following it, one can only wander.

How deeply I pity all those who wait to redeem themselves from the worries of ineffective days, who gather from birth and set off only for death.

How good it is that I succeeded and am here, deprived of a past.

How good it is that I am here, where I can only think about what will come.

The serpentine street reflected faint tongues of light. Individual silhouettes of people became increasingly distinct.

The end of my journey became increasingly clear.

Beyond that, there was nothing.

"Nurse," Sister, "have the respirator disconnected—it's no longer necessary." Please write down February 23rd - 00:27 Death occurred.