"Her hundred very distinct lives [...] meant she was very familiar with a hundred very distinct wounds,” wrote John Berger about a friend and photographer. The unwounded lack desire, I think Berger also wrote in the same essay. Every life of mine was enveloped around a wound, and when I entered a new life, a new wound awaited. There was a mother who couldn’t love me the way I needed, and a husband who craved only alcohol, and an academic career that didn’t flourish. Of late, it was the child I’ll never have. Desire, I had so much desire, I could scream with the sheer keenness of it. Around each wound, though, something like a scar enfolded. Often I forgot. Forgetting wasn’t intentional, something that occurred with purpose or out of deliberate indifference. Somehow the itch (the new skin knitting over the wound) lessened and eased away, and only when I really look at the place where I was wounded, am I startled into remembering.





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