What a beautiful word.
It sounds like a heartbeat.

It begins with an open vowel, a, and quickly closes into u, enclosing the emotion and giving it a percussive direction - one that can move backward or forward, toward the past or the future.

Saudade holds within it everything that is good.
Everyone we love, the most delicious foods, the finest scents, the most beautiful landscapes - all of it fits inside this feeling-word.

And nothing, at the same time, lives there too.
Absence. Loss.

Absolute fullness and complete emptiness within a single word.

Sometimes, “saudade!” is almost like saying “good morning!”
A word of everyday life.

Not a caviar word, a rice-and-beans word. And full of flavor.

by Nanná Millano