Soul

1.

“What are you doing?” he asked rushing to her.

“Look at it. It is so tiny”, she answered, holding out her left palm for him to see.

“What is it?”

“Can’t you see it? I thought you might not. It is so tiny I can barely see it and I know how it looks.”

The man moved closer to his lover concentrating his gaze into her open palm. And there it was. The most beautiful little sparkle. A blob of energy containing remnants of thousands of galaxies, right there in front of him.

“That’s incredible. What does it do?” he asked in awe.

“What does it do?” she laughed. “You silly man. It’s a soul. It doesn’t do anything and yet it’s everything”

Whatever that meant. He was lost for metaphors. And he had so many questions. Like how could she hold something like that? And whose was it? And most importantly…:

“Is it alive?” he muttered.

Her face blanked for a moment but then the smile returned.

“It is. Can’t you see the way it moves?’

And it did move. It was swaying gracefully and very slowly. It was erotic. (if it’s appropriate to say that about a soul.)

‘But…’ she continued, ‘It won’t be for long, unless we do something’

‘What? Why are you saying? Is it dying?’

‘So many questions, I wonder if you can speak without asking anything’ she laughed. ‘It is…consuming itself. Not dying per se but melting and going back into nothingness of the space. The only way to stop this, or at least delay it for some years, is to make it grow’

The man stared to ask how to make it grow, but then thought better and said:

‘So, we make it grow. We have to. It is too beautiful’

He was mesmerized. The soul was full of colour, singing through its shape to him.

‘We do. I just…don’t know how.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘I have no idea.’ She paused for a second and then she said something he wasn’t expecting it:

‘I have had it my entire life. I believe it is my soul. Somehow it didn’t come inside of me when I was being born, it was around me, covering and protecting my body. My mum said that when she pushed me out, the doctor fell back on his chair, not because he was scared by the sudden light that came out from my mother’s body, but because – he later said this – he was convinced he was in a presence of something higher than God. Obviously, he was mistaken, but it just shows how much he was impressed by the beauty of it. Imagine this tiny blob, being bigger, covering a new-born with its colours, protecting it, and moving like that around him. Oh, I wish I could have remembered it!’

‘But why didn’t it grow with you I wonder? Or why didn’t it, at least, stay the same size?’ he asked, not sure whether to believe this tale or not. He was starting to have doubts about this soul thing.

‘I can’t remember my toddler years and I don’t know what happened around that time, I only remember tiny pieces. The first good memory I have of it, was from my first day of school. My soul was still big, covering my torso like a blanket. I was shinning and I was happy. We went inside and the teacher welcomed us all to school, we had juice and sweets and we got a colouring book as a welcome present and my soul grew a little that following night. I was as if happiness made him bigger. And it was all good until I started to notice how the other kids were looking at me. I knew I was different, but I didn’t think I was scaring them. They were confused and hesitant at first. But then they started to say mean things about me. How my light was disturbing them in the morning. How they couldn’t see properly when we were playing in the yard. The teacher even put me at the back of the class saying my light is too bright to be in the front. Days after days passed, and they treated me worse and worse. My teacher didn’t protect me. She was annoyed by my light, annoyed that she got me in her class. And it is then when I first noticed my soul getting smaller.’

She paused and looked him in the eyes. Was that pity she was seeing? He looked confused, sad, and as if he couldn’t understand what she was saying. But she had to continue. Too late to go back now.

‘As I grew, my soul got smaller and smaller with each sadness. But the changes where slow and for a few y