minute 34

The lights in the room are dimmed. Every now and then, when the wind blows the curtains apart, soft streams of light flash over the walls and over the faces of the people. There are lots of people in the room. Nurses. Nuns. A Doctor. Family… My family. I can´t see most of the faces because they are standing there with bowed heads, their faces buried in their palms. Mourning. Crying. Trying to understand. Someone opens the big wooden door and I can hear a loud sob coming from the corridor. My mum… The nuns look like a flock of ravens or crows, standing there huddled with their long black robes. When I was little, most of my friends were afraid of nuns. But for me they always had a calming way about them, they had something wise. Maybe in another life I could´ve become a good nun. Now they are praying for me… That’s me, laying down there. Is it still me, though? After all I´m up here, somewhere floating near the ceiling. Am I floating? Is there something left that is able to float? Or am I in the air? In the wind? A big sea of blood gets whisked off the floor, bloody sheets get removed. They take off the body´s nightgown and start to clean the chest, the belly, the legs…The doctor went to a side room from where I can hear a strange noise. High-pitched, a squeak, like a cat when someone stepped on its tail. I see all of this as if I glance through a Kaleidoscope. The motions, faces, colors become blurred before my eyes, they get separated in hundreds of lights, pieces, and now and then they become a unity again. Why am I still here, why can I see all this? Shouldn´t I be somewhere else by now? There has to be a “somewhere else”! I want to say something. I want to scream! But my throat remains silent. I can´t speak, can´t smell, can´t touch anything. I hover, I float, I´m not in a stable shape anymore. But I´m still me. Am I? They dress the body in a clean white dress, pin up its hair, and make it look like it´s sleeping peacefully. It looks like Sleeping Beauty, or Snow White, just before a prince comes for her rescue. But nobody is going to rescue this body, bring it back to live. People are coming closer, stay for a while, saying their valediction words. My life was perfect. Full of joy, happiness, love. Like the idyllic inner world of a snow globe. Peaceful, perfect. But now someone, something has shaken the globe too hard. My world got destroyed. Everyone´s crying. Can I still cry? Can I feel anything? Very slowly everything gets more and more blurry, bleary… The pictures are shaking in front of my eyes, the color is gone…black and white are left. It feels like something is pulling me back, away, out of this room. Out of this world? Suddenly a voice says:” 21 inches… 6,8 pounds…healthy!” … David… When he took his first breath, I took my last.


Anna Sophia Perez Sanchez