The story of my person
is the story of a giant fear
of being myself,
opposed to the fear of losing myself,
opposed to the fear of the fear.
It could not be otherwise:
in apprehension we lose our memory
in submission everything.
It couldn’t,
my childhood,
pillaged by family,
allow me a stable, concrete maturity.
Nor my solitary life
allow me something less fragile
than this thrashing between worries and insecurities.
I survived childhood,
I survived adulthood.
Almost nothing compared to life.
But I survived.
And now, in the ruins of my being,
something, a firm utopia, is about to bloom.

[Original Italian by Piera Oppezzo (1934-2009).]