I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

Did they only keep me in ignorance so they could pretend they weren’t entirely powerless?

Perhaps, when someone has experienced a day-to-day life that makes sense, they can never become accustomed to strangeness.

being invited to participate in the life of the past, in that world they spoke of together and which I now saw they no longer intended to exclude me from, even though I already knew that I’d never be able to enter it.

I discovered physical solitude, something so ordinary for all the others, but which I had never experienced. It immediately appealed to me.

It was only at the moment of death that they admitted their despair and rushed headlong towards the great, dark doors that I opened for them, leaving the sterile plain where their lives had gone awry without a backward glance, eager to embrace another world which perhaps didn’t exist, but they preferred nothingness to the futile succession of empty days.

And what does it matter if I’ve become mute in a world where there is no one to talk to?