I have small bones, like those of a little bird. My father had them too. As a child, I’d look at his ankles and think they didn’t suit a man, but he was a lawyer, not a laborer. He didn’t fix things around the house. He wasn’t even home, though my mother claimed he was.
In fact, the pigeon died inside the water heater pipe, and no one removed it, making the marble-floored apartment even less welcoming, and my mother even more impatient and stressed.
Now he’s no longer here physically, but I always feel him beside me, woven into my days. My mother, on the other hand, is alive but gone. Her big bones are barely covered with skin, but her gaze is still the same—curious, strong-willed, attentive, probing.
July yawns wide. People are sluggish, already halfway out of their own lives, chasing a few weeks’ escape. For us freelancers, it’s just emptiness—no Christmas bonus for the poor self-employed. We scrape by with crumbs, trying to reach September without falling apart. We go gather dry wood for winter; neighbors give us zucchini, tomatoes, wild plums, and sometimes a bit of game. The village turns half-deserted, leaving only the elderly and those like us—more of us every year.
In the mornings, when he moves quietly around the room collecting clothes so he won’t wake me, he smells of coffee and soap. Then he leaves, closing the door behind him, and goes to an old man’s house to move brush in the garden—for twelve euros an hour.
That’s where we’re at—Little House on the Prairie style. He does the manual work; I make the bed, do the dishes, wash the laundry, tidy up the house, and embroider cushions for my online shop, alongside my work as an artist—which, for now, is beautiful but useless for survival.
People are starting to realize their purchasing power is slipping through their fingers like sand, but they still don’t say anything. Most are still too ashamed to ask what the hell is going on. On social media, you start seeing mothers asking for food for themselves and their children, with long comment threads of people offering help—boxes of pasta, canned goods, money. A few scold or suggest the church food bank, but most understand, because they know, even if they don’t show it.
People, for all they’ve been dulled by the media, the crumbling health and education systems, the fake food, are still human. Not all people, but most.
For my birthday, I’ll get a new journal, which will meet the same fate as my old ballet shoes. I’ll tear out the less important pages—the calendars, the accounting. I’ll stretch the metal spiral, make as much room as possible, because it will become a container for photographs, ticket stubs, and flat little objects I pick up along the way.
Because reality has no built-in meaning. Reality is neutral. You’re the one who dresses it in calm or in dread.
You’re the one who decides its color.
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