The moon shone in its splendor. I only contemplated it without paying attention to the noise caused by the people on the boulevard, I was simply absorbed in the depth of space and everything that is so well protected by distance.
The night was cool and it lent itself to young couples walking hand in hand without showing the slightest fear of what a fortuitous fate might await them; In a way, it is comforting to see them so self-absorbed and trapped by the love of youth, that they do not need anything else on this earth that is not that other person, rejoicing with their smiles and complicit glances.
I don’t know how much time had passed in my meander, but I decided to get up from the bench where I was sitting to go and have a coffee at one of the many places along the road.
Only a few minutes had passed since I started walking. Memories of those times in which I also gave myself to those ephemeral loves of early age passed through my mind.
When, without warning, I felt the world shake at my feet, a slight sting ran through my entire body, rising from my feet, passing through my stomach, and hitting my chest.
In the blink of an eye, I felt as if all the blood in my body was staying in my head and everything that was presented in front of my sight was nothing more than a blur with movements that I could not decipher. The voices of the passers-by were nothing more than babbling that had no coherence, and the cries of the children playing around were like the swarm of a hornet’s nest. It was as if it had taken all my strength, all my breath, to be able to raise one of my hands to my ear to try to mitigate all that noise that was driving me crazy.
My knees buckled and I felt my teeth chatter with the fury of an earthquake. Tears, unable to contain them, ran down my face. My body was bathed in sweat, a viscous sweat that in the cool of the night was like a bucket of cold water on thousands of pins stuck all over my skin. Despite all this, I did not feel fear, just a daze that did not allow me to think clearly and all my ideas fluttered in my mind without forming a concrete thought. My heart beat with an unprecedented paroxysm in my temples and it was as if the thickest of oils were circulating through my veins; my swollen throat did not even allow me to swallow saliva, it accumulated like a broth in my mouth and foamed at the corner of my lips. I wanted to scream but an invisible hand was clinging to my neck, shutting down any attempt to issue a request for help.
As I struggled to try to order my thoughts and ask for help to try to escape from that bitter prison that was my own collapsing body, the world hit me with all its force on one of my sides and I could smell the earth on the pavement. At that moment I knew that I had fallen and surely at that moment I was lying in the middle of the boulevard, I just couldn’t remember exactly where I was, I didn’t know if there was someone trying to help me, I didn’t feel anything other than that oppression that came from myself, from that malevolent body that closed all escape routes towards a more friendly exterior.
In my ears, I felt the sound of a turbine that rose and fell in intensity, and in my crotch was the warm moisture of unwanted urination. I remember that one of my hands, or so I think it should have been, was hitting my chest trying to mitigate that pain and weight that was compared to having the pressure of a safe on my sternum.
For a brief moment, barely a second, I could hear a voice, which I recognized very clearly because it was precisely my voice, which told me as if I were an impassive observer, that it does not belong to the macabre work represented before his eyes: – “So.. this is what it feels like to die!”
At that moment I was embraced by an infinite peace and I understood that this treasure that we yearn for throughout our lives, this unattainable utopia, we only obtain it until the moment we lose our last breath.
JDR. 08/05/2011.