The breath was coming out and coming in heavy. In total darkness and this forced silence that it resented screaming even once. Oh, tears! Again, those tears that drew from the darkness of her eyes and what irony it was, she could only feel and touch them.

She always thought that, at the time of death, the soul that leaves the body must look like love even a little in order to be saved. The soul must look like its Creator, who is love. Her darkness is temporary. And it belongs to the body.

Her spirit saw everything. The blockade of the visible world opened to her the door to the invisible. She rarely talked about it. She thought that if she said words like that to people, she'd get graphic. Invisible vision is never understood into the visible matter. She thought so. That's why she kept all these conversations inside her.

She approached the window and breathed deeply into the smells of spring flowers. A vivid desire flinched between her many feelings. She wanted just for a while to see the spring in Vancouver.

Reality landed her once again, listening to that inner voice whispering to her not to become obsessed with this because she would despair in a meaningless attempt at something that was not possible.

In her darkness, she remembered her childhood. Watching parents work hard for a piece of bread; her two brothers who were starving and crying in secret under the table or the bed.

She remembers when she spoke to her family to ask God to rest them in eternal life. End their suffering. With this deal, they all laid in their beds, and the stress was gone. There was no concern about what they would eat the next day. No stress on survival. A redeeming feeling for the whole family.

Their request was not granted. The next day they all woke up. Again they continued to face the harsh reality of survival. Here we go again. Difficulties, poverty.

Only since that day, the trials and tribulations have not been so unbearable. They went through the same suffering, maybe worse, but they didn't despair anymore. There was a silence on everyone. There's never been a moan again. The parents defeated by cancer, left life six years ago.

Lavinia Olsen could see until she was seven years old. At some point, her eyesight became blurry and slowly within a year she went blind. Congenital bilateral glaucoma, the doctor said.

She was the younger sister. First was Patrick and his twin Betty. Lavinia remembers them well enough until she was seeing. The twins were four years older than her.

Many times she had the black thought that her parents should stay with the twins. It was a tragic thought since the parents had not even imagined that their third child would be doomed to live in darkness. What parents have such a thought when they decide to bring a child into the world? No one.

But for Lavinia, who was experiencing this reality, this first happy thought of parents when they want to have a child, was not the same and seemed almost impossible for her to feel that feeling.

How much weight she felt when the simple and daily things were being burdened onto the others and she should have wanted or not, to leap from her mouth a word equal to gratitude.

It's not that she didn't recognize the help. But courageous from a young age, she always saw herself in those who would benefit and not in those who would receive.

And here, today, after all these events, came the day that she was most afraid of it. She was avoiding, someone would say. She will stand for the first time against her lost light. She never listened to the doctors who seemed optimistic.

And if it wasn't for Vince Cooper, she never would have had that surgery. Whatever the outcome is, at least, she'll keep him close to her while he'll keep lighting her up with his own glow; the one which saved and the other which destroyed him.

She lit him up inside, and he was the eyes she didn't have. He first saw her at a concert about ten years ago. When he took the first steps in singing.

Lavinia was accompanied by her siblings. She couldn't see him; she could only hear his voice. Vince quickly stood out in stardom because of his velvety voice and she, listening to his songs, saw him with her inner eyes.

At that first concert, he immediately picked her out of the crowd and asked his assistants to bring her to forward to the stage. Her siblings gave her his wish and she lowered her head down as a sign of embarrassment because she couldn't see him.

She thought about the life that's going on and everything's moving forward, but she just stood still. She backed away from whatever life called her to experience. She was just eighteen years old and Vince twenty-three.

"Can't she see me at all?" he asked her siblings in his dressing room after the concert.

They discreetly denied him by tightening their lips. He lit a cigarette and approached her with a carefree youthful look. "What's your name?"

"Are you talking to me?" she told him by shaking her hand.

"Of course. You see someone else here?"

"If I could see, I wouldn't ask," she responded by lifting an indeterminate handshake.

Vince bit his tongue off the blunder he said and shook her hand so tight that he made her smile.

"Lavinia," she stuttered.

"Hey, Vinnie! I'm Vince Cooper. And I dare say I was very pleased!" he said cheerfully.

"Me too," she responded cautiously.

"Vinnie and Vince. Our names look alike. But I get the feeling that we also look alike," he said jokingly.

She smiled timidly. The darkness of her eyes was limiting her reactions but even more her feelings. She wanted to feel and she couldn't. In that situation, all she could do was thinking. And something was telling her that Vince wouldn't just be some random guy passing through her life.

---> This is Mary Trigas who inspired the title of the book and made the cover choice. Thank you very much!