The Scent of Your Breath

Thirty-two

In the corridor of our house was a giant stain, right beside my room. I thought it was the profile of Alfred Hitchcock, and every time I walked past it at night I started running with my eyes shut and then slipped under your covers, still shaking with fear. Or rather, first I watched you sleeping. I stood by your side of the bed and watched you for minutes at a time, moving my head as kittens do when drunk on their own curiosity. Tears came to my eyes because you filled me with tenderness, lying there like a little girl, with your serene and heedless eyelids. Then Hitchcock came back and imposed his shadow over my eyes and I fell back into darkness and desperation, in the certainty of being alone. Then I sought your warmth.

One night, as I was running with my eyes shut, I didn’t notice that the door to your bedroom was closed. I ran like an untamed horse, unaware of anything, aware only of the night and its shadows. So I crashed into the door handle and bumped my eye with greater violence than anything I had ever experienced, but I pretended everything was all right so as not to worry you. I slipped as always into your bed and went painfully to sleep. The next morning the blood was dry and dark on my cheeks. As you washed my face, concerned about what had happened to me, I looked at myself intensely in the mirror, and what I saw there was a divine, saintly figure. A bleeding child, a child that quenched itself with its own mucous membranes.