Shame has an expiration date. It is impossible to apologize to the abyss indefinitely for standing on the edge instead of lying at the bottom. When the numbness passes, dry rage remains. This is not an emotion – it is a way to keep your spine upright in the face of that which is trying to cancel you.
The body no longer asks permission to breathe. It simply takes as much oxygen as it is entitled to by the right of presence. The thirst for life during a catastrophe is devoid of hope – it is a purely mechanical, physical stubbornness.
A woman by the mirror after a shelter draws a line of lipstick. Her hand does not tremble, not because she is brave, but because this is currently the only territory of order available to her. While a siren wails outside the window, the sound of porcelain against a saucer remains clear and familiar. The cup returns to the saucer. Thus occurs the occupation of one’s own day, where every mundane gesture becomes definitive.
There are moments when the map of the front and the map of the table merge into a single knot. At the peak of a threat, everything superfluous vanishes. A heavy, almost animal appetite for all things earthly awakens: for scents, for the roughness of concrete under one’s palm, for the warmth of another person. The body does not pray – it declares its existence. Each movement becomes equal to itself, regardless of yesterday or tomorrow.
Stability and guarantees have lost their weight. All meaning has compressed into a single hour of calm, from which as much life is squeezed as was previously smeared over years.
The world may wait for quiet sorrow or convenient numbness. But continuing to slice bread, to look into the eyes of the person opposite, and to straighten one’s back – this is the most honest form of resistance. The right to joy requires no justification. It simply is – like the walls, like the tablecloth, and like this day. The day continues. Life goes on not because one got lucky. But because, by its very nature, it does not know how to stop.