APRIL 8

How strange to not have to choose the baby’s name. I think about it without a sex. I think of it as neutral. I’ll give it a secret name. No. I won’t allow myself any fantasy. My body has started to get heavy. I’ve thought about my dad these last few days. About how he’s always capable of detaching himself from everything; about how, in any situation, he can excuse himself with a melancholic expression. Excuse himself from everything. My dad is an absent, sad man, but I suspect there’s a passion in him that comes out with others, in the depths of that melancholy there’s an obstinacy for some possible happiness. There have been very few times when we’ve been able to communicate; the times we have were thanks to wine. Or my husband who has a way with words, excess, argument, always happy vitality. What my dad and I don’t understand.

APRIL 22

The landscape is beautiful.

Abandoning a place can also be a way of remembering its outline, traversing its topography.

I want to leave this house, but at the same time I want to move in forever, remain in this state. Waiting for a baby to be born is better than any other kind of waiting. My body keeps growing, my face distorts, my eyes are smaller. With time the child will look like them, the Danes. I read about this in a blog about adoption. I like to think that one day the two of us will unknowingly meet somewhere and won’t recognize one another, but there will be some sort of synchrony.

MAY 8

I went for a sonogram. I didn’t see anything. I took my clothes off and put on a blue robe. The doctor ran a wand over my abdomen, and I closed my eyes and started to cry. I went with one of the women from the foundation. I hated the procedure. I left with chest pain and didn’t ask anything, nor did they give me any information, but it was necessary to go, they repeated ad nauseam. I imagine he’s healthy, but if he isn’t, will the Danes still want him? The women from the foundation monitored me the whole time, they’re afraid I’ll change my mind. I won’t. Only on days like today, which shimmer with their beauty, I’d like to hold the baby in my arms for a little bit. But then, imagining the real weight, I feel like my arms are about to fall off and say no, too much weight for me.

My arms and hands have gotten thinner while the rest of my body gets fatter. It’s strange. My rings fall off my fingers.

MAY 22

I force myself to write and draw.

I feel like I’m carrying rocks in my stomach. I prefer to think they’re rocks.

I read a lot. I walk. I eat vegetables. I translate. It pays well. I also help M by editing the texts he’s working on. I feel hidden. There are times when visitors or friends of M come over and I stay in my room, and even though he hasn’t told me to, I stay there, quiet, like in the hiding places of childhood homes.