I Who Have Never Known Men

I cannot mourn for what I have not known.

But human beings need to speak, otherwise they lose their humanity,

I lived in a perpetual present and I was gradually forgetting my story.

And now, racked with sobs, I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all.

I cannot mourn for what I have not known.

Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence.

how can you feel privileged not to have something that everyone else has?

I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct. Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence.

You’ve never seen a child, you don’t know what it means – their vulnerability, their trust, the love you feel for them, the anxiety, being ready to lay down your life to save them, and it’s unbearable to imagine a child’s pain.’

I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.’