At the wheel

I hold the steering wheel of my car and look at the horizon. The chapter of my life I just closed propels me forward, and the need to start the next one begins to whisper in the crook of my neck. Shhh

I feel the emptiness of finishing a book and the urge for the next one to be as intense as the previous one. The emptiness of fullness. I carry it all with me. I want nothing more, but at the same time the call to the abyss. An unknown place that no longer scares me because each and every one of the things I have achieved in my life have come from there, from entering the darkness, adapting to it and discovering the lights, the nuances, the galaxies that would never have been shown to me if I had not taken that first step.

A yes up front, that's how I define this moment. A "yes, I want", whatever comes, whatever I find, whatever comes and stirs me. Yes to colors, to shapes, to flavors, to the new and the old seen with new eyes. Yes to what I don't like but decide to give a chance. Yes to listen to the heartbeat of other lives and make them my own. Yes to sit at the table of strangers, yes to show up at the door of old friends and dance again to the sound of our previous lives. Yes to adding, multiplying, exponentiating. To grow and start over as many times as it takes.

My spirits, my stories, my certainty that you never fall so far that you can't get up. All of that goes with me at the wheel.

Sometimes with music in the background, those notes that transport me to some chapter of yesterday, the drums that push me to the future abyss, or with the most absolute silence, which accompanies my present breathing. Today, here and now.

Suddenly, the imperious need to stop. To slow down the road and conquer this very corner where I am. This corner that no one has ever stepped on as I can step on it. No one has breathed it as I have, or filled it with my experiences. I stop the car and make it mine. I get out, I walk, I feel, I breathe, I sing and I conquer. I plant my flag. I nail it to this place and this moment forever. It waves like an underlined sentence in a book. Here was Manuela. Here I have left my whole being for an instant. Here, where no one before, that of Manuela.

For the moment, that's the only way I want to start. With sensations. Like what the skin in contact with the air provokes.