Translation of Le jour d'après from French to English
She is nine years old, yet she no longer has a child's life
She has been living for months between these four white walls
She knows well what she has and she knows well what she wants
She has lost weight, she has lost her hair
She goes through care, treatments, protocols
While all her friends play in the schoolyard
She would give anything to join them for a few hours
Sometimes, she screams about it, often, she cries about it
"Patience and courage", her parents repeat to her
They tell themselves the same thing, in the evening when they part
She finds patience, and her courage is palpable
She draws a strength that only children are capable of
So she laughs, she makes up stories
She only thinks about the future, she makes up hopes
The warrior will heal, real life is close
From her ivory tower, she looks at the day after
He had worked in this factory for twenty years
Fired overnight by an anonymous letter
Bought out by a large group, a story of shareholders
There are several in his case, ordinary tragedy
With the installments to pay and the piles of bills
He quickly decided to sell his car
But without it and without a diploma, far from codes and far from the city
At fifty, finding work is difficult
It's the escalation of misery, infernal spiral
He is evicted from his apartment before the winter truce
The first nights on the street were the hardest
But then, strangely, he no longer feared his future
He draws a strength that survivors know well
He tells himself that we are no longer afraid as soon as we have nothing left
He will soon get out of it, he feels it, he is ready
He is looking for training and looks at the day after
He comes back on a scooter from his twentieth birthday party
The fault of a reckless driver, the fault of bad weather
It doesn't just happen to others, it's not a legend
After his accident, both his legs are amputated
He spends a year thinking back to that night
Then he stops dwelling on these stories of karma
With his carbon legs, the future becomes concrete
He even wants to play sports again and looks at the day after
To all the worn out, the accident victims
The fragile, the unlucky ones of a day
Those who have no choice, the imposed warriors
Those who carry their cross, the forced heroes
Those who refuse their fate and change their story
And those who transform the desire to believe into victory
To those whose future is sometimes in suspense
Those who see the day after, and those who have not succeeded