Spes phtisica

I pretend my tissues are red with phthisic blood.

I play pretend with all my diseases.

I make them tragic and grand as I’ve always done.

I have been Violetta Valéry and two of the Brontë sisters this week.

The river outside my window is the stage and the co-protagonist.

He read too much Baudelaire, and he always abounds in greenish waters and ravens.

He pretends to be the Lethe, shaping the fog into spectral figures.

He promised He would tell me abyssal secrets if I only went to Him.

But I know too well now that while he whispers ancient wisdom and braids my hair with seaweeds, I will lose myself in His dark waters.

I am still doubtful whether I should go or not.

I am convinced I was water in another life. Or at least one of the birds that hang out around it.

The inconstancy of reincarnation doesn’t serve me, and I prefer the lazy persistence of pantheism.

Despite that, my house is catholic. It has Madonna’s portraits and crucifixes in every room.

I like the baroque style of Catholicism. I like how Jesus Christ was the first performance artist. He was probably screaming on the cross, but in the canonical images, he seems to be moaning.

I am interested in Catholicism for its art, not its after-life program. I do not care for the resurrection of the spirit if it is without flesh. If I must barely be alive, like a sigh or a breath of wind, I prefer to lay in the ground, body and essence.

I’ve asked too many times in Sunday school how a soul is. They told me it is like a poem.

But which kind of poem? Some poems possess more strength and more blood in their veins than I do right now. Some poems have started revolutions. Some inspire Love, some Death.

Love and Death. Eros et Thanatos.

The two directions in which human life constantly goes, according to Freud.

Why do we even listen to Freud? He definitely knew something about Death- cancer gave him a taste of it-but what about Love?

What do I even know about Love?

Love is to shed tears as an offering to the altar of a forgotten pagan god. Death dries your tears just to pour them into your lungs. Eros opened the doors to Thanatos.

It all started with one kiss at the parade.

The doctor came three days later. Clinic eye, thermometer, mask and a brief rictus on his face:

I will be sick for a few more days and ill all my life, to someone.