During the treatments for my cancer, I came to terms with a forced cohabitation between me and my body. There could be no escape. Maybe for the first time in my life I realized me and her, her and me, we were the same thing.

I wrote many letters to my body, I selected this one for this place.

you and me

so go ahead
and love me
while it’s still a crime¹

I’m trying to live. And living is a matter made of air, I breathe it through my nostrils, hot and heavy. Living is first and foremost a matter of the body. It’s always me and my body, it’s still me and my body, we’re together, and I can’t leave it. I often think that we’ll never leave each other again, if not on the threshold of the last step, the step of death. In some trembling moments, when the air gets heavier, there seems to be no room for anything else, for anyone else.

I am her and she is me.

We are trying to live.

I’m trying to stay inside my body now, relearning how to walk like a little filly: dirty, curious, shy, afraid. Still beautiful. I want to reclaim the time I lost - not the time cancer took from me, no. I am speaking of a loss that came much earlier, long before anything else. Long, long before. I’m trying to live through my body and through the bodies of my fellow sufferers. Those who have endured what I have: not just the suffering of cancer, but the deeper suffering of loss. Cconsumption. The final unraveling of all the things.

My companions in misfortune: eight people, eight stories, eight bodies. Mine is number nine. That’s a choice I’ve made: to come last, to be the end.

I am the closing credits.

Every week we breathe the same air, we drink the same water, we tell each other the same things, always using different words. We sit on the same chairs, we step on the same floor. I struggle a lot, I struggle to be with myself and I struggle to be with them, even if I am growing fond of them all.

I struggle above all to close my eyes and to move all my attention to my skin, to my muscles, to my bones, the bones that are there, deep down somewhere, ready to support me, ready to carry me around.

I struggle to find them, I struggle to feel them.

I struggle to count my toes, I struggle especially to feel this weight on my chest, the one that goes down toward my right breast, the one that freezes my shoulder, blocks my movements, makes me stiff, incapable.

So every now and then, just like this, I imagine myself leaving this body and entering another one, one of the other eight.

It’s an exercise I did a lot when I was a kid, one that in truth I’ve never stopped doing. It requires imagination and a pinch of madness. I possess both in abundance. I close my eyes and open them again, I imagine myself for a few moments in the body of one of them, I am body number one, then four, then seven.

I am no longer the closing credits.

My hair is red, my skin is pale, my eyes are blue like the ocean. I am shorter, now I am taller, my nose is proud, my legs are slender, long and slender, my shoulders are broad. I close my eyes, I open them again. I return to my own body. I breathe. The air is hot.

“Write her a letter” - they tell me - “a letter to your body”, they say.

But they don’t know that I write to you all the time. They don’t know I could never tire of it. And they don’t understand that even this — writing to you — is a way of staying outside you. A way to keep you at arm’s length. To make sure I see you, yes, but not too clearly, and never too deeply.

So I won’t feel too much.
So I won’t love too much.
So I won’t live too much.

Coward - I tell myself.
How I wish I loved you more.
Liar - I add.

I love you so much, I have never loved you this much.
In reality, I wish I had started sooner, I wish I had loved you like this before. Before the illness, before everything.
I no longer want to walk beside you, I no longer want to be near you to escape your eyes, often looking away, to the other side of us. This span of distance between us is an ocean wide, and it makes no sense, it makes no sense at all.
I only exist if you protect me, and you — you only exist if I protect you.

I am you and you are me.

How selfish I have been, to resign myself so quickly to this nature of mine that just can’t cope with concrete, material things, those that are made of blood and earth. For the entirety of my life, you have said to me things I never understood.

I have never spoken your language, never bothered to learn it.

I always felt different, always something else. The hair where it shouldn’t have been, my ass too big or too small, my sour breasts, my big ankles, my strange knees. I couldn’t see you, standing there, beautiful and healthy.
You told me things that didn’t make any sense, and so I stopped listening. I pretended not to hear, I ignored you and - what I fool I was - I ignored myself. I wanted to be loved, and if you couldn’t make anyone love you, I would do it for you.

It took me so long.
To find love, I mean. To find peace, security, to feel accepted, seen, appreciated. Desired.

I wish I could do magic, I wish I could go back to our twenties, and tell you that you deserve it all.

You deserve everything, and I deserve everything.

Because you and I are one.

I would tell you that the glasses are thick but cute. That the fuzzy hair is normal, that there is nothing to be ashamed of. I would tell you that our straight hair was beautiful, yes, but curly hair looks good on you, too. And that it’s okay if you don’t want to wear makeup, that you don’t have to because everyone else does. I would tell you that you are different, you feel different, and maybe it’s true, it’s certainly true, but different is beautiful, it’s rich, it’s unique, and I love you just the way you are.

I love you just the way you are.

I’m telling you now, and I know it’s true, but I know that this love is not a band-aid, it doesn’t heal, and it doesn’t erase.

But the truth is that I would like to hear from you, too.
Write me a letter, sometimes. Use these small, round, smooth, olive-skinned hands we have. Use them to tell me that I didn’t hurt you too much, use them to absolve me, give me the forgiveness I’ve been seeking for decades now, and that doesn’t come, but I don’t give up. I never do.

Tell me that I didn’t do everything wrong, tell me that I didn’t hurt you too much, when I was a child and I decided that we would play alone, you and me, that it was okay to spend hours and hours on books, to invent games and to invent words and never share them with anyone else. Tell me that it didn’t cost you too much to survive, when I fed you too little or just wrong. Tell me that you were okay with living in the shade, being slow with me, away from the spotlight, away from the sun, on our marble steps, cold and hard.

Just don’t ask me for forgiveness, never, because there is nothing I need to forgive you for.

Paola