Extract from Le temps des reliures by Benjamin Milazzo (2025).
Translated from French by Eponine Howarth.

I am bound to doubt.

         Doubt?
          It’s what binds the world.
          (a pause)
          In your hands
          or
          in your head,
          to bind is to read things
          in a certain way.

These ways
are fragile.

          They require care.
          They require time.

So what?

          Sometimes,
          you bind yourself
          so well to waiting,
          that around you, everything remains,
          without any sign.‍

(sudden pain
in the back)
Dust,
and fog, yes.
That’s all I see,
everywhere.

          What matters is to commit.

What I see is
an intermittent blockage.

          Sometimes, you trample.
          Even on a prayer.
          (a pause)
          Being isn’t everything.
          It’s
          a slow work,
          that runs along the tongue,
          that takes over completely
          (a pause)
          and who,
          to do it?

I’m endlessly
at a standstill.
I stopped to see
facing a wall.
To go around it
is impossible.
(a hand on my back)
And it hurts.

          To move forward,
          you have to climb
          over roughness.
          Touch it, feel its cracks.
          If that wall is too smooth,
          then take a step aside.

Why?

          Because that, too, is moving forward.
          It’s asking yourself to go on.
          And a prayer by habit,
         it’s a strain on the mind.
         To keep
         the mind
         from tearing.

I’ve often written
on scraps of paper.
Often, they follow me as I read.
I lose them.

          You should
          burn them
          to reflect the moment.

Time is delirium.
(a pause)
Then everything
disappears.

          Everything, and
          that’s certain.
          You, me, this, everything.
          Even the fire and the ash.

(a pause)
I mean:
they get lost in my head.

          Forgetfulness is beautiful.
          You struggle to try
          to hold on to it all. It’s
          sealed tight in your mind.
          They’re like tin cans,
          sealed shut,
          and in the end,
          they get lost.

My mind is full of
papers
half torn.‍

          (making the gesture
          of tearing pieces)
          They’re ready to burn.
          You forget what binds them.
          Burn them.
          You think:
          this way I’m free.
          And somewhere,
          that flatters your mind.

These tin cans,
as you say,
can burst.
The pressure on their edges is so strong.
I can feel it.
It’s fermenting inside.
It compresses and it’s fragile.

          They’re tightly sealed, don’t worry.
          Like that book, there,
          (nods toward the object)
          in front of you
          that never stops locking you in.
          That never lets you be free.

Some books
are like that.

          Which books?