Knock Knock, Open Wide

by Neil Sharpson

life is cruel and arbitrary and awful and you have to seize your happiness and hold on until your fingernails bite your palms and draw blood?

Like any city-dweller newly alone in the dark countryside, Etain realized that she suddenly believed in ghosts.

Betty’s first term in UCD passed in a mad rush of stress, drinking too much, eating too little, insecurity, and anxiety that would years later, somehow, bake and cool in her memory as happiness.

I can’t live. With or without you.

That is the purpose of Na Daoine Maithe. The awful and arbitrary cruelty of life, reduced to something that can be bargained with, reasoned, or outwitted. A face, put upon that which cannot be faced.”

She hated giving condolences. It always felt like adding to someone’s suffering, not taking away. Forcing them to acknowledge you. To thank you for the gift of useless, meaningless words.