just pain

"e;I watch my daughter now dancing to classical Russian music, standing on her toes, circling objects and allowing them to enter her circle, inhaling and exhaling, flying and falling, clinging to her partner, who lifts her up, her thighs sticking to his as if they were the poles of a magnet. He reaches for her curly black hair, unties its pink ribbon and releases it. With a thin stick, preventing the ribbon from falling to the ground and without disrupting the rhythm of the dance, she attaches the ribbon to her waist. The same pink ribbon that Polina attached to my waist one dance. I look at my daughter as if time stands still for her while she watches the hare running freely in the snow, running towards me. I drop the stick that has replaced my foot for thirty years and open my hands to embrace it. For the first time, I don't feel the pain of the nail hammering into my memory. With one foot, I think With Paulina, I hug the white rabbit my daughter freed. ***************************Lying on my back in a white room, I take off my clothes and shoes and put on the medical examination gown. There are medical instruments, soothing music, and a doctor who doesn't talk much and hums an Abdel Wahab song as if he were in another world. He touches the area of ??pain, and I wince in a hoarse voice. For many years, I've gotten used to not screaming in pain, but the tears overcame me. I close my eyes and use that traditional trick... but the smile of the man I still love invades me; the man who abandoned me for no reason, or perhaps for many reasons. The doctor says words in French, as if he's cursing after singing "e;I'm afraid to say what's in my heart."e;... He asks me to look at the screen... I look at his face first, but don't find the gentle smile, then at the screen. A dark red or blue mass of flesh, the color of petrol (I couldn't distinguish the colors), large and rotten... Dots White spread everywhere, not dots but circles, when he brought them closer they appeared clear to me... wounds lengthwise and widthwise...