It was as if the shame would outlive him
F. Kafka, The Trial, 1925

MOVEMENT ONE – MEMORY

I

I had reached my limit. The rain would not stop, and the fog would not lift. I sat in an armchair and watched my life drift past, as if it had never been mine. I poured a glass of whisky and drank slowly. I have always feared death, yet now life feels empty. Perhaps I still hold on because I want to understand it.

My stereo plays A Day in the Life. The music moves from image to image, then collapses into silence. I was not there to take his hand. I was ashamed to enter his room when he was ill. They say you cannot go back. I feel I cannot go forward. I do not know why I am here. Everything is blurred.

I move through the room, following the music, and I remember being a child in his arms. We danced, and through him I first felt life. I barely remember anything else. Now everything has turned to dust, my thoughts circling without end. Something still beats beneath it, a dark presence that has drained me since he left.

The room is cold. Outside, the rain continues, and I welcome it. I feel closer to the dark than to anything else. But I was not always like this. When I was young, I dreamed of life. And now, at the edge of everything, I want it more than ever, just as it fades.

II

Do you remember, grandpa, how drawn I was to dreamlike, anguished films. I watched Wild Strawberries over and over. Now my soul unwinds along lost paths. I have no light to guide me. I see darkness at the end of the road, and it deepens.

I still hear the names I used to call you as a child. You told me I was grown and should stop, but I never did. You loved me more than your own life, and there was something in that love I never understood. The day you died, I knew I had lost everything. Only then did I understand that I had never been alone.

I studied and read everything you gave me. You were proud of me. At school I could not stay still, but you found ways to guide me. Books stayed with me. Now it is too dark. I can no longer read, and I do not know what to do with my life.

No one wants to die, and yet I wonder. You used to say that one day everyone disappears, and all that remains is the desire to leave. I did not believe you. Now I see it. People have gone. Time has passed. I move among them like a shadow.

There were moments when I wished I had never been born, and yet you stayed. When you died, I cried out and asked why I had been left alone. Stay close to me. I do not know how to live without you.

III

Grandfather, do you remember our conversations, your wish to follow me, your worry when I was away. You had a quiet compassion, even for my faults. Now I long for the image of you that once lived in me, already fading. What remains is inadequacy. I am not like you.

I remember when you retired and your students brought you a painting. I see it now like a distant film. That same day you were hanging pictures, including the photograph of me in London that you loved. You said I looked like an actor. I remember your calm expression, and how I touched your face while you first resisted, then accepted it. I remember your warmth holding me together.

Now everything feels drained of life. The darkness opens before me. I touch your forehead and then mine, your eyes behind your glasses, my reflection fading as they slowly close. Your breathing changes. Your body grows still. Fear rises. I reach for you, but I already know.

I had always feared this moment, and I stood there, unable to move, at the edge of something too vast to cross.

IV

I see you again, always the same, looking at me in silence, telling me you must go. I see no tears, only a dark current that pulls me under.

You stand there, as if you had always known. And I know it too. I remain there, afraid, drawn into something I cannot escape. You were the only one who never made me feel alone.

I wish I could hold back time, just to embrace you again. I wish I could remain in that moment. Come back to me.

V

I remain in silence, searching for light. I saw you reach out your hand. In you I saw an example of a life lived with quiet strength, and I begged you to give me that strength.

Now silence surrounds what remains of you. You taught me humility. You did not often praise me, and only later did you understand that absence.

That morning, I understood that something had ended. Childhood had ended. Youth had ended. What remained was silence, and I was left alone.

VI

I see your shadow shrinking in my mind, and I try to hold it there. My body grows heavy. Help me, grandfather.

I remember the day outside school when I could not find you. I cried until you appeared, running toward me.

And still, I feel you near. I feel your hands. Your voice fades.

And yet something remains. I try to reach it, but my thoughts falter.

I see us for a moment, then it fades. I take sand in my hand and watch it slip away. The images dissolve. I will not see you again.

I cry out, but no one hears me.

VII

I witnessed a death that felt foretold. In my dreams I saw you return, only to see you going away again.

“You have walked with me. Now you must walk alone. Do not give up on life. It is short. Let what was good in me live on in you.”

You gave the best part of yourself in silence. A silence I broke.

MOVEMENT TWO – THE CHAOS OF LANGUAGE

VIII

After you were gone, I could no longer bear the house of my childhood, yet I was afraid of the world outside. I turned inward, until I felt I would break.

My way of seeing changed. I stopped trusting others. Everything felt unstable, as if language itself were shifting.

I withdrew into my mind, imagining forms I could not grasp. I chased a faint light, and in the end I saw it for what it was: a fragile attempt to hold on to hope.

IX

Leaves rise in the wind, trees are torn from the earth, houses collapse. Everything trembles. A storm is coming to erase every trace. Darkness falls. Tomorrow there will be only indifference.

Life has broken into fragments I can no longer connect. Words have lost their meaning. I call out to you, but nothing answers.

My hopes collapse into dust. Everything feels distant. Even light seems uncertain.

I turn inward. There is no color, only shadows.

X

I feel pulled toward life, but I am afraid my mind cannot carry me through it. Speaking about my pain does not help. It only makes it worse.

I feel judged, as if I have failed. What troubles me most is the distance between me and others.

We don’t speak the same language.

XI

My writing has always tried to give shape to what I could not understand. At times I came close, but never fully.

My life has grown fragile. I feel myself collapsing inward.

What once held me together is no longer enough. I cannot recover what I lost. What remains is a quiet plea for help.

MOVEMENT THREE – EXIT FROM THE MIND

XII

I see my room again. A small bottle of antidepressants. I am no longer afraid. I swallow one, then another.

I have had enough. My life feels like a mistake. Even breathing is a weight.

I want to escape my mind. I no longer want to be myself.

XIII

The room is empty. My thoughts flicker. I see the sea at the end of a tunnel and move toward it, weighed down.

My body tightens. Something inside me is too intense to hold.

I try to stand, but I stagger. My words break apart. My heartbeat fills everything.

It was a mistake. I cannot undo it.

XIV

Fog. The desk stretches, the floor tilts. I fall, try to rise.

Nausea. Burning inside. My mind on the verge of breaking.

Music carries me. The world disappears.

There I died.
And there I was born again.