My body stretches in unimaginable ways. My body knows this will be its only pregnancy. My body knows how to do this, my body knows how to reproduce itself despite having a giant myoma, along with the fetus, filling up my uterus. But it doesn’t know how to raise a child, my body cannot do that.

AUGUST 21

The book I finished has a beautiful scene, there are pages of description of a woman on the verge of tears, but she doesn’t cry, her tears are checked, returned to the controlled stream of her body’s tears. It’s about a woman who has been married her whole life to a man who is in love with another woman. The story focuses on images that, like photographs, extend throughout the book in long descriptions that I feel close to.

During the day I read and draw. I cook and walk. At night, sometimes I watch telenovela episodes. Yesterday I watched Topacio and died of nostalgia. I always watched that soap with my grandmother because it came on at night. Me, under the cold sheets of my grandmother’s bed, she, with a hot-water bottle between her legs, our bodies never touching, admiring the long hair and beauty of a blind woman.

AUGUST 27

I wanted to avoid the imminent, but I couldn’t do it any longer. So I thought. I thought about the baby. I thought about him as a boy. I remembered the rat I saw in Guayaquil, I said it’s a rat inside me, but then I said no, it’s a baby, and I talked to him, I explained what I’m going to do. Words have again fallen short. I thought I don’t feel love for the baby. I’ve never had a maternal instinct, but what I have had is a visceral need to protect this creature and later I thought that this is love or the instinct that in other moments I’ve lacked. So I do love him. But this isn’t enough to raise him. Neither is the milk I feel forming in my breasts and tingling to come out from the thousands of little holes of my nipple enough to raise him. It isn’t an abandonment, it’s a gift. I told him that I’m not abandoning you, I’m gifting you. I told him that I’m not selling you, I’m gifting you. I told him that I’m gifting you, they deserve you more than I do. I can’t do this job, but I will birth you, that I’ll do.

I feel an abysmal pain is coming, greater than anything, but I also feel, again, like I deserve it.

AUGUST 28

I had a horrible nightmare and woke up with a sensation of helplessness, a sensation that knocks me over even though I know it so well. M came into my room and grabbed my hand and with tears in his eyes said you’ll never be alone. I cried and thought about my friends, thought about my mother, and thought there’s a love that protects me. My belly is so big I can no longer see my vagina, barely my feet. I feel like my thighs are about to split open. I feel like my skin will rip at any moment. I haven’t bought anything at all for the baby. I’d like to knit him something, but if I do anything for him, I won’t be able to let him go. Surely the Danes already have everything. They now call every week, and M reassures them, tells them I haven’t changed my mind.