The Days of Abandonment

by Elena Ferrante

when you live with someone, sleep in the same bed, the body of the other becomes like a clock, “a meter,” he said—he used just that expression—“a meter of life, which runs along leaving a wake of anguish.”

it seemed to me that I loved him as I had never loved him, with anxiety rather than with passion, and

But I immediately removed that idea of solicitude attributed to a man from whom I solicited nothing anymore. I was an obsolete wife, a cast-off body, my illness is only female life that has outlived its usefulness.

I have to relearn—I said to myself—the tranquil pace of those who believe they know where they’re going and why.

the circle of an empty day is brutal, and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose.

It was really true, there was no longer anything about him that could interest me. He wasn’t even a fragment of the past, he was only a stain, like the print of a hand left years ago on a wall.