Before It Happens

You walk towards the library and still none of what has happened has happened. While she turns towards the crossing you watch her whites of the eyes expand, and you think: She knows she’s doing it, and if she doesn’t know it she feels it, because it alters your breathing. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and turns to you and you think: Yes, she knows it, of course, she’s teasing me, playing the game, to reach where we are not. When all that has happened has happened you will write several essays about the women who on 21 July 1996 never murdered the Deputy Prime Minister outside party headquarters on Sveavägen. About the individuals who could just as well have done it, but never could, like you.