NYM

Nym

During the lockdown, the spring came.

And her sweet taste turned in a bitter aftertaste, following a winter, with its perennial fog, that seemed so difficult to overcome.

This land, where you live, still looks to you like a foreign country, where you struggle to recognize yourself and find your place, but now, during this bittersweet spring, you feel it close to you, painfully close, and you would like to chase away that breath of death by embracing the earth, walking again on the banks, admiring the sunsets, breathing deeply into an air that you wish was less harmful for everyone. But you can't.

And then you are ready to look at a straight cat as a supernatural gift. One day she just came, from where you can't know, perhaps she lost her way, she started to behave friendly and to visit you more and more often. You start calling her with a name, Nym. The thought of seeing her come back after every excursion in the countryside keeps you awake, and the moment you see her coming back gives you some kind of comfort.

The countryside, where your house is, becomes your shelter, not to leave behind what is attacking life outside, but to endure it, to try to transform it, sometimes even to let this time pass. It is the first spring that you are spending in this house, perhaps you would have imagined it different, but you live it so, intensely, holding on to her, in every new bud that looks out to challenge even the fence, in every flower that blooms, in every tree coming back to life after months of frost. You avidly savor this luck. It almost becomes your prayer.