I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

And now, racked with sobs, 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.

For a very long time, the days went by, each one just like the day before, then I began to think, and everything changed.

‘Because I want to know!’ I raged, suddenly grasping why it was so important to me. She couldn’t understand why someone would want knowledge that would be of no use to them, and I couldn’t get anything out of her.

But human beings need to speak, otherwise they lose their humanity, as I’ve realised these past few years.

Death is sometimes so discreet that it steals in noiselessly, stays for only a moment and carries off its prey, and I didn’t notice the change.

apologised. They’d lived together in a little house. They argued noisily and made up again with great promises: you had to do something to pass the time.

what does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?

I begin, I fill them with words, I pile them up, and I still don’t exist because nobody is reading them.