This is getting ridiculous, she said. He had told her how he thought she should make her next move. Alright, she said, I’ll do it.
She moved her piece. Now we’re back in the circle again. That’s not fair. Why are you telling me to lose?
What’s not fair? he asked. Are you any different than you were a minute ago?
Yes. I had you cornered, she said. Now we’re back where we started.
In still moments, I hear it: the small voice of who I was, once, for four weeks. It was winter, then, and we know how I hate winter, but even in snow, I could have reached out at any moment and touched the rough wall of a building filled with art.
On those short winter days, I read, and napped, and walked, and wrote and wrote and wrote. On those long winter nights, I drank wine and played cards.
It was perfection, and when i’m still for a minute, it’s the thing I want most.
Do you hear what I’m saying? she asked. Do you hear what I’m saying?
She had suspected for years that the answer to the question was no, but had been too afraid to actually ask. Now the question hung out there, floating in the netherworld between their phones, perhaps lost, perhaps ignored.
Sometimes, when silence fell between them, she filled it with a new topic. Today, she let the silence grow louder and louder between them. She didn’t drown it out with more unnecessary sounds.
She started creating soft barriers between herself and the world, nestling in amongst pillows wherever possible. It had become too difficult to stay in hard places, her skin made raw by corners and edges.
At night, she built a fort of pillows around her head and torso, curled against them, and slept soundly, her dreams arriving as if through a barely-smoked filter. In them, everyone smiled and no one asked too much. It was a much more satisfying world than the one she was used to inhabiting, and she began plotting ways to get there earlier, stay there longer, and minimize the time she unwrapped herself from blankets and emerged into the sharp light of day.
My uncle picked an Irish hymn for his Jubilee Mass, and as I listened in the front row, I sobbed, nearly uncontrollably. My then-husband patted my knee, unsure of the emotion’s source–and I could not explain it to him.
“It’s old music,” said my cousin, some time later, when we spoke of this. “It touches something ancient and deep.”
I hear that hymn now, in my uncle’s cavernous absence.
Be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray
your love in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.
I understand the tears, this time.
Whenever he couldn’t find her, he checked all the dark places. She could often be found in one or another, scribbling something into a notebook or onto a scrap of paper. The scraps drifted about her bedroom like snow, gathering in one corner, then the other, depending on how quickly she moved about the space.
Are you afraid you’ll forget something? he asked.
I write things down so there’ll be a better chance of them happening, she said. The world is so uncertain, and it’s the only insurance policy I can afford.
Tell me one magic thing, she said. Surprise me.
He thought about everything he’d seen and where he’d been. He thought about the way light fell across water, and symphonies that evoked bird songs.
I had no idea where I was going, he said, finally. And I did not know where to look. That is how I came to where you were, and how I came to see you standing right in front of me. It’s the only magic, really, that I’ve ever needed.
100 Proof 