7.30: dawn is coming. Purple light; the outline of the pipe that runs along the kitchen’s edge, the white wooden door to the lane; the wheelie bin. Purple and black and white: those are the colours of this threshold. This morning – is it morning? – I feel as though I have kept vigil all night; that I have seen to it that the body of the departed was watched over. I watched; I was vigilant – but who was it that died?

I kept vigil over my own death; I was awake aside the corpse I am. You should not die alone and no one should be alone in their death. Of course, it is in the memories of others that you will live – your friends, your sisters and brothers give you a kind of life. As long as you remember, you will remain in limbo; neither in this world or the next. When will they release you into forgetting? When they, too, are forgotten. But when will that day come?

Last night, this night, which is becoming morning, I outlived myself. Upstairs I can hear my neighbours passing from one room to another. Water drips from their bathroom into mine: there are others around who are alive. But last night, was I alive? Who was I, who watched over my own death? Who was I, companion to the one who died?

Ulysses passes among the shades, but where do I pass? Alongside myself; among myself – but that is not right either. The body is a stone withdrawn into itself. The body has turned aside from the world; its attention is turned to its heart. That is sleep: the body is turned to the heart and the heart expands to become the whole night. And you who watch over your body? You, awoken, who watch over your own sleep? Witness, vigilant one, who are you that withdraws from me now, at the shore of morning?

Light in the bathroom of the house opposite; the sky is light blue, and the colours of the world reveal themselves. It is 8.00 AM; two hands wrote this post. As night crossed into morning, so was there a crossing from death to life. The body has awoken; its attention is drawn into the world. The companion withdraws; no one is required to keep vigil.