The mundane hopes for a pause bring air back into my future. The life I have been acting on the last couple of years, has been a living purgatory. From my cave the sunlight seems more dense, but my will to stand up is heavier than the heat. I have learned to live alongside emptiness and pain, sadness and regret. When I look back into the eyes of excitement, all I can think of is an unwritten novel. Back in the day, the character played by myself was filed with hopes and young dreams. Disconnected from my past, all I feel when traveling back in time, are the stabs of a joyful world now disappearing in front of a crowd-less theatre. I have learned to draw lines on the palms of my hands, to try and predict an invisible future. But it doesn’t matter how hard I try to wake in the light of change, my brain is burned out of positivity. At least, when I lay on the city of a good night sleep, the monsters on the bed and the spirits that haunt the air vanish alongside reality for a few hours. This minutes are my most treasured possession, because when I get to live a normal life, I get to experience the sweetness of being happy again. - Valeria Bredée