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Recognition

I was leaving a hospital, after visiting someone, when I saw a man walking with his wife, their arms intertwined. She had a tired and tense expression in her eyes and helped him walk. Exhausted too, he walked. He was wearing blue hospital pijamas, the uniform of the near dead, of the kind no one wants to look at, since they remind us all that they can fit anyone.
I passed by and his eyes had an intense brightness. One that only those who had walked similar steps could understand. "Good afternoon! It's nice to go out, take a walk! Isn't it? He recognized me by looking into my eyes and smiled. "I've been here for thirty days. Last week they allowed me walk around the hospital for the first time. Today I took the chance and asked if I could do it outside. They let me!" He smiled again and took a quick look up to the open blue. 

 I felt a little tightness in my chest, mind and heart went back in time. Blue pijamas, unsure steps, one foot at a time, until the window, through which rays of Sun  shone in. The realization of the beauty of a blooming tree, the wet green grass after the months of draught in Brasilia, the blue sky, after uncountable intravenous accesses, catheters, vitals monitoring equipment, tests, darkness and death. The warmth of the Sun on your skin, the realisation of nature's life going on randomly and the hope to, one day, again, be a part of it.
"How wonderful!" I told him. "You know,  I've spent two months in a hospital. I know how it is to look at the sky like that!"
He smiled a large smile, his eyes smiling as well. I said that, but there was no need! I know he knew it already. He had recognized me!
"All the best!"
"Likewise!"

I turned around and resumed my walk. I felt my legs naturally striding, my body softly swaying,  the wind on my hair. Walking amidst that nature, that sky, all that I, once, looked from afar, with shadows of pain, eyes of enchantment and a small drop of hope. I felt his eyes following me, leaning on his wife, he observed me walking into the nature, into the red and blue shades of the sunset and he thought: "Who knows, maybe I too will... someday..."



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