Paris, october, 16, 2025
It’s a cold October day.
I stare out the window,
a slow cigarette between my fingers,
and already the air smells like Christmas,
as if the year has slipped past without me.
I never saw it go.
The seasons vanish now
like brief, grey days.
I’ve just finished the thesis on my novel —
years spent digging into absence,
putting into words what silence holds.
I am a Doctor of Philosophy!
And yet,
I’ve never felt so close to nothingness.
A thesis on exile —
the one imposed from outside,
and the one that lives within.
Since then, I already feel dead,
suspended in this text
I rewrite endlessly.
It may never be published.
Not while I’m alive.
I live in a country
cold to my words.
They fall, voiceless,
like rain on glass.
My existence, too,
seems to belong to no one.
I live here,
but have no place,
no language that truly welcomes me.
And yet,
everything I am
is held in these invisible pages.
I have an impossible wish:
to return from the dead
for just one day,
just to see this novel
exist.
This dream feels unjust.
Perhaps even…
a vanity.
But I have no other.
And that’s the paradox:
publishing the book
that keeps me alive.
Rilke would say
it’s the only dream worth having.
© Klara Buda