A no inside my chest, I refuse anything I can refuse. Words come out of my fingers only when emotions can’t come out of my eyes. When my mouth becomes a container of laughter and wetness, when my life feels in technicolor, the page stays immensely white. No black ink bleeding on it. What can I write about if there’s no river flowing outside every single pore of my skin? What can I write about when I’m not touching the edge of the hole in my chest with the end of my fingers? I think of the sky, the clouds moving at a speed I can’t fathom, the shape of my plants growing and the shadows created by the sunlight coming from the other side of the end of the world and yet it’s still here, it’s still here. I’ve eaten life again and I can’t stop thinking of the shape of her body, of the sound of her laughter and is being in love enough? No, it isn’t. But it helps and it nourishes and it moves me to the depth of the bones I can’t believe a doctor and a gigantic, rumbling machine could find inside of me. I think of daisies, and I think of death. I think of all the plastic flowers Porto is full of, wondering how that city must have looked like before we replaced decay with stillness. I look at my eyes in search for a sign I can’t find. Being at the peak means going down. I wax my body in ointments, my face in serums, stretching, pulling this time that feels like a rubber band. I was an iguana once and now that I am human how do I keep my face, how do I make sure that my hands stay the same, as my breath is full of hate for the plastic I strive to be? When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, it must pass through it that’s the only way. I go through life as life goes through me, but this time is different, this time I feel alive. I breathe and I don’t feel anymore the glass, that thin patina between me and reality, that plastic wrap preventing me from ingesting air, the wetness of my breath. The wetness of her breath. Should I write about this or am I doing it already? My fingers search for the edge again and not finding it is like going up the stairs and the last step isn’t there: I have arrived. My foot falls into the void and for a moment I live in two realities, my chest collapses into itself: I can’t find the hole. Am I not whole? The destabilising sensation of not feeling in the middle of the ocean. The destabilising sensation of equilibrium. Everything is fine and well and I breathe in and out and I feel my body. It is alive, I am alive. The trees outside dance to the rhythm of the wind, their leaves shh shh. At the same time, I check again my banking app and the payment I am waiting for still hasn’t arrived. How can it be that I am part of this world, that my planetary body ends with you, and I still need money? How can we have made such a lame reality if daisies every day open up and the jungle is eating itself and whales are singing and wasps are fucking? Airports haunt me, the police officers born out of mercenaries, the ties at the flappy necks of all the old white men deciding what our tax money will pay for. We are comfortable now, our life has never been better, but I don’t believe that human happiness could really be so directly tied to having a washing machine. I observe the last minute of the cycle as it expands and it expands and it expands and time has no more meaning, but the clothes need to get their water pushed out by this centrifugal force. I saw some birds today washing themselves in sand and that must have some value. I find solace in hanging my wet clothes and in looking at the supermarket products, so much choice that empties my brain, capitalist mindfulness. Herzog said about the jungle, “To become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and this overwhelming fornication and overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order” and I believe the same is true of supermarkets. He said, “The birds aren’t singing, they’re screeching in pain” and what if the same is true of elevator music? He said, “It’s not that I hate it, I love it, but I love it for lack of better judgement” and sometimes I feel the same about humanity, and daisies, and car crashes, and everything that has ever happened, that is happening and that will happen. But that maybe is fucked up. I am stuck, I don’t know how to go on. Is this writing? Am I a poet, am I a writer, am I an artist? To make art in this society, what a job. I have done and I am not doing and this makes me doubt everything I’ve ever done. Is making community art? Is asking questions art? This piece of text I’m not writing, but I’m reading. This piece of life I’m not creating, but I’m living. Her fingers on my skin. My fingers on her skin, stroking like the wind strokes the trees outside my windows shh shh. It’s autumn again and I try to capture every second of it like watching a sunset, but slower, but slower. Every day that I have felt like thick liquid flowing down a spill on a table I have been saved by the sight of these trees and how can we forget that? I don’t want to forget that.

Is this enough writing?