“I don’t know how to make you love me,” she said toward the end. And it was true—as accomplished as she was, as able as she was to set her mind on success, this one result eluded her grasp.
He never said anything in return. That’s the way he was—silent and monolithic, unable to make a statement on his own behalf.
I prefer the Civil War term. “Soldier’s Heart” is what I have, and mine is broken, bitten in half by the women and children I gunned down.
I did it for you, America. You asked for my protection, and I gave it. In return, the screaming wakens me, every night, after I’ve barely fallen asleep.
They drive cars like bats, black ones with flat profiles. They are always out at night. She likes that she never hears them until they are all around her, that they know just where she is, even when the lights are out.
It was as if she could only assess the situation by looking into a clouded mirror to see what was behind her. Outlines blurred, details fuzzed over, and eventually it made more sense to her to just make things up, develop alternate agendas for the players she could barely discern. After all, the only other option would have been to stop looking altogether, and mirror or no mirror, she wasn’t quite ready for that.
A life happened there, with friends and people I loved and dirt so dark and thick it coated my fingers. The leaving happened there, too, quick and sharp as a slice through a radish. I have gone and forgotten what it felt like, as if those feelings slid underneath the water, slipped beneath the muddy brown and washed away, down some tributary that once seemed so familiar.
Something in her voice cracked just a bit, made a sound like a sob, when she went for the low notes. No matter how intent on progress the guitar player’s pace was, that break in her timbre made it clear: she had not yet moved forward. She was still back there, entangled by the music, the songs from that day still stuck in her head.
100 Proof 