After

First, everything was dark, and then everything was light. An explosive flash flooding everything. From inside the transparent container, we suffocated. The air growing thinner, more rarefied, less and less. Our half was slowly withering as the days? nights? weeks? passed. We can't remember when it was the last time. It's been a while, the memory so vague it's almost like another life. Who knows, maybe it was? The wicker basket on the brushed granite, the unmistakable odor of rotting garlic, the comings and goings, the weak light over the sink, the sound of water dripping, drip, drip, drip, a constant and consistent meditative rhythm. The smell of brewed coffee, so many times. Until. They grabbed us with one hand, pressed tight, rolled against the board, and WHACK! The quick and voracious blade dividing us in half, splitting us – an indivisible unit, an atomic cellular model – into two irregular halves, the burning milky liquid trickling a little down the sides. And there, a first goodbye, farewell my love. They talk so much about orange halves, they boast about it, you know, from the other stand in the distant basket of every market, it's well known that oranges have a good reputation for being exquisite halves. Not us. No one highlights our quality as a half; it's simply not how it works for us. Once split in half, we become almost… obsolete. Heads or tails, fifty percent chance for each. One part of us, content and enthusiastic, is chosen to continue its life towards the long-dreamed-of happy ending. It knows that the end will still be painful, but that it will be rewarded. Paradise, Eden, our Valhalla. From the corner, half-forgotten, we, the other half, observe everything — silent, meticulous, perhaps a little scared. Fearful, yes, we watch everything fearfully, for ourselves and for the other part of us that will move forward towards this longed-for future. To fulfill our destiny on this plane, to become our purpose. Half crooked, half fallen, half forgotten between the board and our own peels, we dodge the slimy juice of the tomato seeds and attentively watch our other half being cut, the tip of the knife in a crescent moon separating our layers, then horizontally, better when it's sharp or serrated, it goes faster that way, each of our little pieces releasing into the air infinite droplets of burning juice and then, suddenly, the salty rain of a cry that we never know where it really comes from, whether it's from inside or outside, whether it's our fault or if they're just using us as an excuse. Is this our destiny, to always push our blessed tormentor a little further towards the precipice? Interrupted by sobs and cries, uncontrollable tears run down their faces while they uselessly try to dry them, and in this so naive, so automatic act, they carry on their fingertips the burning juice that is also us directly to their eyes, and they stick a bit of us in the corner of their eyeball so that we can burn and burn and burn and let out all the crying that there is to cry in this world, because we all know the purest truth, which is: there is only one remedy for pain, and that cure always comes as salt water, whether in the sea, in sweat, or in tears. And it is at this moment that we are picked up, without any care, without any affection, without any appreciation, they pick us up with the same hand that holds the blade and dries the tears, they pick us up with peel and all and throw us into a pot, when we are lucky, because sometimes it happens that you come right in the half marked by the bad luck of bad luck, double bad luck, and so, right after being rejected, you are collected along with the peels and the rotten garlic clove and the slimy tomato seeds straight to hell. But not us, we had bad luck at the beginning, yes, the half that was left aside, the half forgotten for an eternity in the bottom, in the cold, in the dark, absolute abandonment, but then came the flash, and the light settled on our translucent skin, and who knows, who knows if a little bit of luck didn't remain for us? 

We hear the click of the container lid opening, and we can finally breathe. How long does it take for a half to be considered "too old"? Too old for what? For whom? Under what circumstances? But what if it has been well preserved? What if the container has an airtight seal and the frigid temperature is constant? What if it is frozen? The latest cryogenics techniques guarantee: eternal vitality. Forever and ever. The great-great-granddaughters of the most remote generations will open the vacuum-sealed chamber and find us inside, intact, beautiful, tasty. Identical. The promise of youthful freshness, almost ripe, ready to serve them and fill them with pleasure. 

We are pushed directly against the greasy granite. We are a little shocked, yes, without the slightest decency to even remove this dirt. We look around, nervously, everything is so different since the last time, we barely remember, yes, because our memory is short, but from what we remember, everything is so, so different. Bags pile up in heaps in the corners, the trash can on the other side of the stove overflows. I think I see a small piece of our other half's peel. Where? There, right there, in that corner. Further to the left, do you see? There where a cockroach is now passing. Yes, we are seeing. Cockroaches, in the plural. And the smell. The smell is so unpleasant, so horrendous that I wonder if we have already arrived in hell and didn't see it? Did we miss the passage through the fateful decisive moment and simply woke up directly at Dante's gates? We can't understand how this can be happening. Nothing in our life prepared us for this moment. 

The smell of gas. The sound of the flame igniting. The pan on the stove, iron scraping against iron. We keep the little aroma that remains after so long and slowly release it into the environment. We want them to notice us, we want them to love us. Who doesn't? Even if it's a visceral and fleeting love, the love of a knife blade, even if it's to be crushed, at this point we eagerly accept any love that comes. 

We are divided into four pieces. Half of half of half. I get lost in the math, no, we were never very good with numbers. We detach from each other, and the halves of halves can no longer stick to each other. Little by little, we begin to release our sweet aroma, or what little remains of it, we slowly awaken the senses of our surroundings, we want to stifle the smell of rot and death and contaminate the air with a little of our awakening scent. And the crying, the sound of crying, the choking of crying, the smell of crying — this time they come first. From within, a volcano erupting right in front of us, barely has the knife cut us, and the crying is already there, it has been there since before, maybe it had been there all this time, since before the light, throughout the darkness, since the last time, the endless weeping. 

We feel the water leaving our body as we touch the surface of the hot iron. Aluminum or some toxic compound invented by men convinced of their wars. We don't know. We only know that it is hot, too hot, and when we think it couldn't possibly get any hotter, we begin to suffocate in the steam of our own perspiration. Could this be the last purgatory before reaching the promised land? We feel our tips singeing, the edges burning, disintegrating. We stick to the bottom of the hot iron, and we know that some of us are leaving, no matter how well-intentioned, they will not be able to complete the journey to paradise because they will end up carbonized right there, in the unbearable heat of the flame, beside us. 

The lid opens, and for a few moments, relief. A light current of fresh air carrying hope moments before a reddish paste falls on our small withered pieces, burying us. We remain there now, on low heat, anesthetized to the sound of the bubbles bursting and the distant sobs. We then do what we know best: we wait. We wait for the water in the tub next to us to heat up, we wait for the dough to soften, we wait for the crying to be contained — but it never is. We wait to mix with everything, we wait for the dish to be served, we wait for the wine to be opened. We wait for the napkin on the table, we wait for the pills to be removed from the blister pack, we wait for one, two, three, five sips. We wait for the first bite, the "see you later" we wave to our own, an explosion of molecules in the mouth sky, we are no longer half of half of half, now we are infinite in a voracious whirlwind of voices and thoughts that multiply on all sides but that ultimately resonate a single mantra, the sound of the universe that mixes with the rain and the hoarse voice of someone who repeats in a language we don't know, "saudade, saudade, saudade." We wait for something to happen, we wait for the encounter with ourselves, the before, the now, and the after, we wait for the concretion of our destiny, the promise to be fulfilled. We wait. While the empty glass, the abandoned fork, the chair dragged, the woman asleep. We wait. The smell of rot taking over, the cockroaches finding us, the green mold covering every corner, every remnant of each and every one of us. We wait.