My younger daughter showed me a small box containing her milk teeth, and it took me back to an overpass on a junction devoid of houses. When she was still alive I used to cycle there to take my elder daughter to school on the back of my bicycle, and it was exactly on this spot that she lost her first milk tooth. The road surface there consists of an asphalt-like substance containing a generous helping of gravel, 20,000 milk teeth per square metre in fact, and peer down as I might, all my efforts were to no avail as well as death-defying, what with all the traffic rushing by, and a curve in the road to boot.
And now, whenever I feel desolate I sense the fingers of self-pity, of guilt, probing my brain: was it something I did wrong, no matter how trivial? I wouldn't know for the life of me what particular battle remains to be won, but sometimes it feels as if one's conscience insists on paying in exchange for even greater sorrow.
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