Carolina Bacchi, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) Her attention was drawn to a piece of paper on the desk. Unlined, blank. She didn’t remember placing it there. Maybe the night before, when she opened the last box from the move and found a collection of colorful papers left over from her granddaughter’s party. At the bottom of the pile, there was a yellow sheet, cut in half—an unfinished project or a forgotten scrap. The party was centered around making decorated, hand-painted cards. The yellow paper was a promise. She sat at the desk she had placed in front of the living room window. In the distance, the sea repeated its waves. The sheet, still blank. Her hands wrapped around a blue pen, but the words wouldn’t come. She looked around. The apartment already felt like hers. In the corner of the desk, she had placed her orchid, flowerless. She noticed a small green leaf beginning to grow. She gently stroked the plant, sharing that moment of uncertainty with it. She turned back to the yellow page and wrote: "Yesterday, I moved to the beach." Inês Ataíde Gomes, Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicanálise Her attention was drawn to a piece of paper on the table. It was a bright yellow paper, the very color she used to paint the sun in her childhood drawings. She sat down. And without thinking much, her fingers began to fold the paper. First, she folded it in half lengthwise. Her mind wandered to the balcony overlooking the garden of her childhood home. It was there that her mother would spread out papers, jars of paint and brushes in the late summer afternoons. Then she took the corner of the sheet and folded it over the middle. She remembered the rose bushes with their tiny pale roses, whose buds were so perfect. She never saw roses like them again. St. Thérèse's roses, she recalled. She repeated the process with the other corner of the paper. So many times she had played in that garden with her friends. She remembers a photograph from a carnival party: she was dressed as a flower, in a costume made by her mother. The skirt was made of red crepe paper petals, and in the headband that held back her hair, a flower of the same color. Fold the side about a centimeter and a half from the central crease.
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