What’s inside me? If I were to pick four visual elements, they would be …

A tree, because I think there is a tree of knowledge that grows inside me; because every single time I ingest a seed (be it from an apple or a pear or a grape), I imagine that something else will turn inside my body; because the body is a land that needs to be planted and/or whose crops are proportionally dependent on the care we show; because I am curious to discover; because I know my “winters” and how the winds howl through my empty branches, but I also know my “springs” when I am, by birth, in bloom. Inside me there is a magnolia tree, a fir tree, and a bonsai tree — all surrounded by a magnificent bamboo garden.

A heart, because it’s the spot where I hear my childhood pouring in my veins, circulating inside me like on a hectic highway; because it helps me to stand still after all my recurrent pain; because my grandma once told me, “I wanted to die, but my heart just did not let go of me”; because if there is no passion in this life, we are as dull as a toothpick; because I have plunged into this field of narrative medicine on account of mother’s cancer, a field to which I dedicate my heart (or part for the whole of my being).

An hourglass, because I know I am here for a limited time; I always hear the tick-tock of my death (and yet I am not scared); because the body is often turned inside out, upside down; because of the small orifice that connects the two parts of the hourglass and lets the sand travel back and forth through that barely visible passage; because the hourglass is the essence of life, a step away from death (the unavoidable tandem).

And, finally,

A cloud, because there I dream to meet my parents and grandma again; my other lost ones, too; my now family soon to be dissolved as well; a cloud because I think I dream of mom (especially) almost every single night; and then I think of father who loved me deeply; a cloud because of cotton candy which I once ate and immediately requested a second one; a cloud because Heaven should be somewhere, and there life broken in tiny pieces and bad ones tossed aside. I cannot possible imagine Heaven as having two scales, bad and good, in constant, vain effort of keeping an elusive balance.

 
Bio: Catalina Florina Florescu, Ph.D., is our newest monthly contributor. She holds her doctoral degree in comparative literature. She is the author of Transacting Sites of the Liminal Bodily Spaces.

 
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