
This
is me, and the scream inside me. I’m watching myself in the mirror to see how I become one year older, in one second. I know it doesn’t really work like this but, somehow, it does. I practice this ritual every year; I expect to see a subtle change in me, a wrinkle around one of my eyes getting deeper, a hair turning suddenly white, a shadow falling over me. As nothing happens, I decide to take a picture of myself so later I’ll be able to study more intently how I looked at that very moment of my life. After that, I take my handbag and go to the market. I head resolutely to the fish shop and spend a fortune on the fish with the weirdest face I can find. I look him in the eye, I try to guess if it’s his birthday too; I don’t even know how long a fish can live, but it is quite certain this fish has had a life.
-Birthdays are overrated. - I say to him while I take him out of the bag and unwrap him.
- You wake up one day and you have to celebrate the fact that you’ve been existing for, let’s say 33 years. I’m not saying it’s not worth celebrating; it is, actually it deserves something spectacular, like a trip to the Niagara Falls, or a whole evening spent on a big-wheel.
I stroke his shiny surface and my left hand gets wet and smelly. With the other one I manage to pick up a tray to place him on.
-You know, balloons and cake are not really my thing. I hate the tune of the “Happy Birthday” song and blowing the candles out (my wish is always “make this end quickly”), and people clapping their hands just because I’ve blown some candles out. I wouldn’t say I’m an embittered ungrateful person, but that sucks.
I cut some leaves from a lettuce to cover him and keep him fresh.
-Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling funny when my birthday is coming up, like when you reach a new level in a videogame, but before starting it you have to take your time to take stock of what you’ve achieved. But how?
Carefully, I slip a finger tip into his mouth. I like feeling his little teeth around it.
-I don’t know what I have to take into account, whether it is the words I’ve written, the potatoes I’ve mashed, the lengths I’ve swum or the bridges I’ve crossed.
Thinking about this, I feel the scream inside me, whose life I’m living too, getting bigger. It takes up so much room that I know I won’t be able to eat anything today. Besides, it’s a while since I’ve decided it is the fish’s birthday too, and because of this coincidence I feel too bonded to him to put him in the oven, so I cook an omelet, a birthday omelet, and hide the fish in the freezer together with the shadow of the scream he probably kept inside him too.