Another life within life

It is the voices of children in the courtyards that fracture the silence, an echo rising up, drawing the deepest memories to the surface: those of a life within life, as though another current were moving beneath the skin, while the very sense of being in the world turns dim, almost opaque.

This is the story of a rose.

She is called damascena, for she comes from Damascus.

Her petals, over time, fell one by one, and still she endured, motionless for years, in a neighborhood drained of presence, and of time itself.

Now the children have returned.

Some are new; others are known again by the lightness of their step.

Beneath the snow, against all seasons, buds have appeared.

It is winter.

Small hands shape snowballs, while in the air a premonition of spring already slips through:

as if nothing had ever truly been lost,

as if a future might still dare to be spoken.

When life surfaces again, even for a single instant,

hope returns to being, another life that persists, quietly,

within life itself.