I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all.

The reader and I thus mingled will constitute something living, that will not be me, because I will be dead, and will not be that person as they were before reading, because my story, added to their mind, will then become part of their thinking.

It is strange that I am dying from a diseased womb, I who have never had periods and who have never known men.