It took us some time to realize: there is a falsehood in believing that we could have been more, or something else -something else, almost anything that, in its undefined nature, rises above mud and flesh, form, work, care-.

You nod because the future also came to you less radiant than expected, and you have counted what you have spent on lotteries. We all gamble our lives in the dark. We entrust every step to a hope with no fixed return, to a hunch without collateral, to the advice of those who walk by different rules.

We strove to obtain what had been promised while the fiercest colours ruled over our path: storks circling in the sky, beauty without adornment, love for our brothers. We wanted to carry a purpose in our arms all the way to utopia.

Something opened in the middle of the ground. Not knowing how to guard against faults made us foreigners to one another. We fled in shame, words were written down in a ration book. We agreed to let walls of etiquette and bureaucracy be raised. Being us went out of fashion.

But now that, tired of suits and reproaches, around a table much like the one we have always known, we shelter the fall of the child and invoke the pacifying verb, power without care is not enough. Sharing ourselves is the only gift worth anything, and to toast to life is reverence and tribute.