“Pela ordem natural das coisas, enquanto a minha avó vivesse eu seria a jovem e a minha mãe estaria a salvo, protegida pelo flanco de duas gerações. Mas entretanto o coração da minha avó parou e eu já não sou jovem, tenho uma névoa de dor nos ossos, a luz escassa de alguns cabelos brancos. Afasto-me de espelhos.”
Andreia C. Faria, Canto do Aumento
“Bastar-me-ia a laranjeira no pátio, o último fogo dos dióspiros, os ossos bebendo o sol de Inverno. Eu podia ser feliz assim. Há exuberância na solidão, há vida. Mas uma mulher sozinha é um desastre para a economia.”
Andreia C. Faria, Canto do Aumento
“We aren’t loved in the ways we choose. We are loved in the ways we are loved.”
Leslie Jamison, Splinters
“Sometimes I felt the baby belonged to me absolutely. Sometimes when she lay sleeping beside me in her bassinet. I ran my fingers along my scar in the darkness: the thick stitches, the shelf of skin above like an overhang of rock. It was just a slit that led to my own insides, but it felt like the gateway to another world. The place she’d come from.
From the very beginning, there was a goodness in her. I knew it was nothing I had made.”
Leslie Jamison, Splinters
“In many photos from my childhood, my mother is embracing me—one arm wrapped around my stomach, the other pointing at something, saying, Look at that. To talk about her love for me would feel tautological; she has always defined my notion of what love is. Just like it’s meaningless to say our ordinary days meant everything to me, because they created me. I don’t know any self that exists apart from them.”
Leslie Jamison, Splinters
