Near to the Wild Heart

by Clarice Lispector

where she just knew, she just knew a worm or two was having a stretch before being eaten by the hen that the people were going to eat.

know it all too well, but I can’t say it. More than anything, I’m afraid to say it, because the moment I try to speak not only do I fail to express what I feel but what I feel slowly becomes what I say.

“has it ever occurred to you that a dot, a single dot without dimensions, is the utmost solitude? A dot cannot even count on itself, as often as not it is outside itself.”

What really gave her a sense of eternity was the impossibility of knowing how many human beings would succeed her body, which would one day be far from the present with the speed of a shooting star.

Where does music go when it’s not playing?—she asked herself. And disarmed she would answer: may they make a harp out of my nerves when I die.