FEBRUARY 28

I look at myself in the mirror, the bump is becoming round. I could spend days in front of the mirror watching the bump grow and imagining I have other lives. Imagining other lives is something I like to do, I’ve always liked it, like eavesdropping. There are nights when I watch M sleep, sometimes he laughs out loud while he sleeps. The times we’ve made love I’ve been surprised by the passion with which he touches my breasts, my little breasts, I feel them harden in his hands. The body mutates and mends itself amid our nakedness: a secret communion that only takes place in bed, in the act of closing your eyes in front of another, in hugging while asleep.

MARCH 4

I cannot imagine any future. Today is the anniversary of my brother’s death. I live in this room as if on an island in the middle of this house that’s so foreign to me. Yesterday, trying to meditate, I remembered my childhood bedroom: bed, bunk, bedspread, and brown plaid curtains. Me, silently climbing the bunk bed ladder to sleep next to my brother, his hot body, his peace. His body must now be shreds of flesh and bone mixed with the dirt. Worms eating his blue eyes. I’ve pictured him dead with that same peace on his face. But that peace doesn’t exist because right now his face must be disintegrating and not even my memory can bring it back completely. Now I too only remember him by pieces: eyes, nose, mouth, forehead, pimples, birthmark (I think I’m making up the birthmark, I don’t know anymore). Will this baby have any trace of that face? Will my brother come back to life through my body?

MARCH 28

Now I’m the one who feels like an island close to being flooded by the sea. My body is now his and the idea that two are living in my body suffocates me. It’s a monstrous idea. My pelvis hurts, it might be a pinched nerve. Every night I’m unbearably hot. Yesterday I heard rain falling on the roof and felt the need to go for a walk. I got wet and walked by a house with a party going on inside, you could hear the music and you could hear voices. I approached and a man and a woman were on the balcony, they were close and talking to one another, and the scene looked like it was from a telenovela, and it turned me on. I got closer, but right then a voice yelled something, she covered her mouth and went into the house. I imagined some possible stories about the scene while I went back to my bed. It isn’t my bed. I can’t sleep. I have insomnia again and am tired all day. I felt the baby’s heartbeat. The baby won’t be mine, either, what a relief. I won’t be the first image he sees, the image of a loss. No, we won’t look into each other’s eyes.