—THEY SAY YOU GOTTA STAY HUNGRY

 

 

GETTING LOST   /   Annie Ernaux

 

 

It’s as if there had never been anyone before you.

 

Restless Night. What to do with this desire? Same for today.

 

I realized that I’d lost a contact lens. I found it on his penis.

 

I think the word for it now is passion.

 

The wait begins as soon as I wake up. There is never any "after.”

 

Tonight, anal sex for the first time. Good that the first time was with him. It’s true that a young man in bed takes the mind off time and age.

 

That which remains unsaid does not exist.

 

We are under the rule of passion.

 

After yesterday, there isn’t much left of the Kama Sutra for us to do. It is quite astonishing.

 

Love and mourning are one in the same for me, in mind and body.

 

It really makes no difference if he calls or not, the excruciating tension is the same.

 

The longer I live, the more I abandon myself to love.

 

For me, words set down on paper to capture the thoughts and sensations of a given moment are as irreversible as time—are time itself.

 

Taking me home, he drives very quickly, my hand on his thigh—the stereotype. Love/death, but oh so intense.

 

My mouth, face and sex are ravaged. I don’t make love like a writer, that is, in a removed way, or while thinking, “I can use this in a book.” I always make love as if it were for the last time (and who’s to say it isn’t?), simply as a living being.

 

And I understand that desire, death and writing have always been interchangeable to me.

 

I have too much time to think of passion, that is my misfortune.

 

What would I do with a man who wanted to change my life?

 

I’m so tired…unable to do anything but think about ‘that thing,” so mysterious and terrible.

 

Truth can only rule in writing, not in life.

 

All my pain lies in this: no sooner have I seen him, and recovered from our (almost nonstop) lovemaking, then I am anxious to see him again.

 

There’s always the dread of seeing love fade.

 

Never say anything, never show too much love.

 

All his gestures are love, like mine.

 

But is it the body? What is the one thing that outruns desire?

 

To say that it is “sensual” doesn’t mean anything.

 

The present is so powerful, so riveting that the future and past seem light years away.

 

Why are the signs always there, ironic and astounding?

 

It is a lovely hell.

 

I am very much in love, it’s a beautiful story.