Mar-

I am standing in the middle of a hiking trail. My calves are naked, scratched by wild bushes, covered in white soil. My feet hurt; I’m not wearing the right shoes. Not expecting the long hike, I had put on sandals that morning, and now their cork soles are melting into my feet. I notice I am feeling a calm that comes only from exhaustion, when muscles reach their breaking point. It’s a pain that comforts. My nose is runny- there is pollen all around, spread by a gentle breeze, along with the smell of rosemary and sea salt.

I find myself before the intersection of two paths.

A faded red circle painted on a rock tells me that I am supposed to follow the one to the left. In that direction, the pine trees thicken, hiding the blazing sun that is now scorching my cheeks and my half exposed back. In between the sound of rustling leaves, I can faintly hear the echo of the laughter of my friends. They had better shoes than me, and it didn’t hurt them to walk, so they were faster. They also had not expected the hike, but made a luckier choice of shoes.

I watch myself walking towards the left path, but I’m not moving at all. My back looks really sunburnt. The me that moved is humming a song, or rather whispering it with violence and intention, as if it was a spell, or maybe a curse, or even a prayer. It stomps heavily on her lips as it leaves her mouth. She is singing it to the trees, pleading them to listen, to help, to release her from it -she cannot stop unless they do. But she is also singing it to herself, compulsively, repeatedly, letting it soak into her body.

I realize I can hear the song much louder than whatever volume her whispers could have. For the me that did not move, the song is coming from the direction of the path I am not supposed to follow. This one has no trees, only bushes, and they get gradually smaller and sparser. Without realizing it, I start moving. The song keeps getting louder, desperately calling to me; it’s begging me to hurry. I feel my body moving towards its source with a will of its own, or of some outside force I cannot see, but I have no part in this movement. The path gets narrower, the laughter of my friends fades away.

I soon find myself in front of a cliff, steep and rocky and very high above the ground. I look down. I see a calm sea, bright blue, extending to an endless horizon. The song is coming from deep inside it, its volume now as loud as it could possibly get. It stabs my eardrums with a violent ringing that causes my brain to vibrate, painfully knocking on the walls of my skull. I start sweating, the sun has gotten unbearably warm, and I can no longer ignore the words that are being screamed at me;

The song is telling me to leave.

I see my leg decisively moving forward. I am afraid of heights; I’m even more terrified of edges. And yet, my leg is taking a step. Fearlessly, I give in to gravity, responding to whatever has called to me.

The fall should have lasted for a long time. It occurs to me that I’m not afraid of heights but of the process of the fall, that what scares me is not death, or the impact right before it; it’s the anticipation, the doom that is not present but impending. It’s the knowledge of the pain being unavoidable and me being powerless in front of it. Somehow, though, for this fall, the anticipation only lasts for a short moment; in a split second, I am just a few centimeters above water. I close my eyes, ready for this, for all to end. But as soon as my field of vision becomes dark, I get a sharp pain in my heart, resisting my surrender, screaming that I don’t want to fall. I raise my hand in despair, reaching out to nobody in particular in desperate hope, hope that someone would save me, that someone would have noticed I’m not in the path I’m supposed to be walking in.

I quickly realize this will cannot happen. The other me is still there, and nobody noticed that this one is not.

On impact, my bones should have shattered, and I should have reached the painful end I was so scared of. I do hear a violent sound, but it is so brief that I’m not sure it even existed at all. The next moment, I find myself still there, awake, surrounded by the deep, dark sea. I cannot breathe, but I am not suffocating. I am peacefully sinking, unable and unwilling to show any sign of resistance to gravity. The song is sounding no more; instead, there is a sense of quietness that is imposing itself throughout the cold water. For a moment, I hope that I will stay there forever, sinking slowly and steadily, with no bottom to stop me. The quiet feels comfortable, soothing, almost loving. The water is numbing my skin with its deadly cold touch. I find that caring -even forgiving.

The cold comfort is interrupted in a split second, when a surge of warmth starts spiraling out from deep inside my core. My chest feels like it is going to burst. The warmth wakes up the cells of my skin, it makes them able to feel again. I open my eyes wide, the water drying out my corneas. A new, aggressive force is activated, pushing my body to the surface. The darkness starts giving up its place to a timid, faded sunlight.

I break through the surface once again, and now I can truly feel it shattering like glass. Every inch of my body is craving for a breath, yearning for air as if it is a long lost lover, or perhaps one that I never had. Once it surrounds me, I let it surge through my nostrils with such speed and fervor, I let it run through my veins like a potent drug, I let it completely take over my body.

With this breath, I wake up in my bed. My alarm hasn’t rang yet, but I have slept enough. My body is dry, but I know I am still submerged. I feel the presence of the water, of the quietness it carried. Yes, I am in the water, but I am not sinking, and I have plenty of air flowing through me.

I walk to my mirror and noticed a line on my back, a faded old sunburn.

I understand the sea is something I now carry.

I walk the same route as every morning. Today, the ground is filled with red and yellow leaves, the trees that they were once decorating are now almost naked. I look at the sky. Its place has been taken by the surface of the sea, faded sunlight reaching me only indirectly, only after passing through gray water.

I find myself before the intersection of two streets.

One of the streets is a big avenue, the other is a tiny side street. I am supposed to head for the tiny one. Before I do, I see two cars coming towards me, one from each street. None of them stops. The one coming from the big street rides the pavement I’m standing on, breaking the pole next to me. A split second before it crashes onto me, I feel some of my body moving away, my reflexes deciding I should have another day to live.

The drivers come out of their cars. They don’t yell at each other, they just talk calmly, any aggression they might have being passive and in a language I cannot understand. My hands are shaking and I try to ask them if they’re okay, but they act as if I’m not even there. I don’t know what else to do but to keep walking, so I do.

My body is lighter than it was before the crash, I quickly notice. I turn around and look back. There is a corpse lying next to the fallen pole. Everybody passes by her without noticing her, but I can see her clear as day. I quickly turn my back to her. I know she is gone beyond any help I know how to give. I take a deep breath, and I feel the quietness coming to me in a comforting hug. I follow the flow of the water, and it tells me there is no choice but to keep walking.

My train deviates from its usual itinerary and I’m waiting for it in a station I don’t often go to. This unfamiliar station is filled with a cacophony of confused people running around, rushing to trains they know they will miss, trains they have no idea whether they can take them to their destination. The stressful buzz is not annoying me, because I can still hear the quietness behind it. It’s hiding behind the view from the station’s bridge, the submerged city showered by the pink sunlight of dawn.

I find myself before the intersection of two train tracks.

I am blocking out of my field of view the anxious station buzz by reading a book. There are very few pages left, and I know I am going to finish it today. It’s a classic, and the ending is well known. I am powerless in front of it; all I can do is anticipate the doom I have to read about soon.

When I read about the protagonist entering a train station, I feel the water around me getting turbulent, something pulling it towards my right. I look, and I see her; the me that walked to the left. She is wearing the same clothes as that day, still sunburnt and covered in sand. The book says that the protagonist is holding a red bag. She is waiting for the train, but she’s not looking at the direction it will come from, only down, at the tracks.

What is pulling the water towards her is the black hole on her chest. It is sucking everything around it, water, humans, their buzz, the air. Her eyes are filled with a quiet desperation, infused with a deep sorrow that feels vaguely familiar, but which I haven’t met in a while. The black hole is born of an emptiness that the me that walked left cannot fill. I know that she has to live with a hunger she cannot satisfy, no matter how much she eats, how much she sucks in. In fact, she has been hungry for so long that I’m unsure she even remembers what it means to be full.

In my book, I am reading about the reason she’s waiting for the train. Black holes are the heaviest objects in the universe. To carry them requires a strength one can only have for so long. “No, I won’t let you make me miserable,” I read that she says, addressing the power that made her suffer. I read that she walks towards the edge of the platform.

I rush to her, and I grab her red bag. She doesn’t look at me -I think she doesn’t know I exist. She resists my grasp, but I am stronger than her. I take the bag out of her hands and I throw it to the tracks. The wrong train passes through and runs over it. When it does, the turbulence of the water stops, her black hole grows quiet. She dares to look at me, barely, with just the corner of her eye. “I am scared,” she says, and now I hear it, I don’t read about it; I cannot read about it anymore, because the protagonist of my book had nobody there to grab her bag. I hold her hand, as her black hole starts collapsing within itself. “There is nothing to fear,” I whisper confidently, not knowing why I know that.

Her whole body is getting sucked in the singularity of her heart, slowly, part by part. I hold her tight, and I only let go at the very last moment, a part of me tempted to keep holding on, to stay with her, to see where she’s going. But I know wherever she is going is somewhere I do not belong, and I know that I have to stay here, because the train I’m waiting for is about to come.

I ride on it, reading about the woman that was not held. At some point, we stand still between two stations -the announcement said there were people in the tracks. I glance out of the window to see the same houses I pass by every day. I know by heart their colors, their graffiti, the decorations of their balconies, some beautiful, some silly, all human, all familiar. But today, something compels me to squint to see the space between two gray houses. There, I find an unfamiliar sight; a small, narrow beach that leads to a bright blue sea. I wonder whether it was always there, a hidden beach in the midst of this concrete, landlocked city, whether I was just unable to notice it until today.

The beach is filled with small, white rocks, glistening under the sunlight. I see her there, lying on her belly, right at the spot where peaceful waves gently crash to give a small caress to the rocks. She looks right at me, her hair wet and salty, her cheeks bright red and full. Her back has a scar from an old sunburn. Her eyes are calm. I smile at her, and I think she smiles back. The woman in my book yells “Forgive me!”; the girl in the sea is forgiven, because she was held. And now, me and her, we are each in the sea where we belong.

I have a thought that this might be the last time I see her, but something tells me that’s not true. I pass by these gray houses every day, and every day that I do, I will know she is there; apart, yet always always close.

When I come home in the evening, I have to pass by the fallen pole. A few shards from the cars were still on the ground, people walking by them not knowing they once belonged to something whole. I am not scared to see the corpse that I left behind; in fact, I am relieved to find that she is still there. With my bare hands, I open a hole in the ground and I bury her. I grab a big, bright red maple leaf and put it on her heart. It’s time to let her rest.