Every Day

"The music played in a slow relentless background to her self-vindication... What she had done, she didn't know. In bits and pieces, yes, but never fully. And she always remembered the pieces. Because if she let herself forget, meaning would be lost. Meaning must survive even if it is painfully false.

But today, there was a strange difference. The memory of a song when she could sing without the shadow. There was beauty in the shadow but it was stagnant. If it was never to be gone, never to be pure sun, the beauty of learning is over. She'd forgotten that.

The latticed window cast patterns on her recumbent figure. The book was near enough but she was afraid that she would have to think if she started to read. If she started to keep silent, if she started to look around. All she wanted was to wash the dishes, change the linen, switch the furniture. Anything but let herself hear herself. You know what I mean.

But if she could even hear her tears, see her apathy for the defence mechanism it was, if she could look long enough at herself, shut up and sit still - she would hear me. And it's all I want. All I ever wanted and thought of when I looked at her that day. The day she couldn't look at me, wouldn't look at me. The day I died. And she's been dying, little by little. Yet I am here and she will not look at me. When she does, she brings so much love to us-two. But it's hard for her to take more than she gives. It hurts. And it hurts me.

Oh, Father!"