Marina was in and out of various rehabilitation communities in cities in Italy and Portugal for thirty years. She was trying to quit drugs but couldn't succeed. She stayed clean for a few months and then found refuge in heroin again.

“In which reality exactly do you want me to reintegrate?” she once told me.

In this book, I give her a voice. To speak about the reasons that led her to drugs, about her need to constantly flirt with death, as if through this macabre flirtation she could heal her wounds and ease the pain she felt. In her tragic life, a crucial role was played by the unhealthy relationship with her mother, a relationship that unfortunately affected my own communication with her for a long time. 

Now that both women are no longer alive, I was able to see my sister's face more clearly, to illuminate aspects of her personality that repelled me and kept me away from her. I reread the letters and notes we exchanged over the years, unearthed old photographs that were piled up in boxes, recalled moments from our carefree summers in Spetses, when she was still a little charming girl, and others later, painful, from our brief meetings in Rome.

The Now I will speak is her swan song. What she did not say while she was alive - since the role of the narrator was monopolized by someone else - she says now in this dramatic fragmentary monologue. Every word of it underscores her unparalleled strength, but also her unbearable loneliness.