Out of the edges

New. The cold morning air that heralds a new day, a new light, a new life. It comes right in your face and you don't just breathe it, you devour it one puff at a time, looking with apprehension at the lady who crosses your path for fear that she will be left without her, not seeing around rescuers with oxygen cylinders capable of carrying them relief. The ones that help people get to the top of the world. Where do you feel.

They say just tear along the edges and follow the route, continuing along the dotted line between a yawn, an exam, a cold and a praise, making an effort to keep your eyes open and not falling asleep from boredom . At each stage there are gifts to unwrap and bottles to uncork with the right company of those who love you and look satisfied at the perfect match between your edges and your cutouts.
Easy, like completing with the right color while standing inside the edges, opening the milk carton by cutting along the edge, walking in the rain sheltering under the edges of the umbrella. Those things that you learn as a child and that if you don't succeed you are a disaster. The imprecise line, an inappropriate color, what an ugly drawing, but what a disgusting child. The umbrella full of sun and you full of rain, the table covered with milk and the cup with a few drops in it.
The red alarm that sounds in a school and inside our houses when we don't even get to the table and it is very good for us to hide underneath as if to shelter ourselves from an earthquake. What no one says, but that can be read in a look full of disapproval, in the tone of voice with some tinge of vomit, in a combination of worry, anxiety and panic that accompanies every small step: he will never make it. How much is missing someone who tells us that we can be better, without hitting us in the face that others are better. That the next mess will be a little less disastrous than this or maybe not, but that doesn't matter and that's okay.

That if the swing does not move an inch, friendly arms will come to take you away and you will go faster than light. That we are also very good at doing something, even painting outside the edges, while everyone continues to stay inside. We are so strong at making trouble, it looks like we went to school. That we are like blades of grass in a meadow that do not carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Because when one day you find yourself on top of the world, you don't even know where the edges were and which side you passed. You sit in the shadow of a mountain higher than the one you have reached, made with all the scraps you left on the street, by dint of tearing paper and eating dust.
Beyond is the beginning of a new edge. Someone starts tearing and you are just the paper. Avoiding tears also means losing all the beauty of the life to come. Accepting to be covered with a mountain of clippings and to wear the marks of some scissoring on the face is not easy, just as it had not been easy to get up there.
But that's the only way to allow a new edge-snatcher to one day make it to the top of his world. As someone did with you.


Marco Grossetti
NP January 2022