Unbeknownst to me, lately I've developed a new reflex. Every time someone addresses a word to me, be it thanks, a question, or a simple greeting, my hand automatically goes to my heart and I respond like that, with my palm gently nestled on my chest (and often with buds of tears rippling like Serbian dances on the banks of my eyelids), and I find myself speaking not “with my hand on my heart”, but hand in hand with my heart. Against the laws of nature, we both pierce the wall of my sternum and intertwine our fingers in a quantum hora grip, until our welded hands become my (her) voice. As if I only double what she was going to tell you anyway, as if I were her echo, exactly as I have asked God countless times to teach me, to help me be, and behold many miles You have traveled with me, Lord, which I did not expect to see (prayer after the Seventh Kathisma).
I hadn't even noticed at first, until one day, when I was astonished to find that on the Scandinavian sand of my eternally cold palms (confectioner's hands, they say!), an unusual warmth had crept stealthily, foreign to the glaciers residing in the canyon of my arctic fingers, and had strategically placed its tanning blanket right in the center,
calling softly, with candor
the rays of a Sun
Who did not hesitate to send forth in a rush
the rays to obey
the tiny warmth that,
without knowing
or perhaps knowing too well,
melted God for me
from Heaven into my palms
and from my palms into my blood.
Ana Bănică