Your Shadow Half Remains

by Sunny Moraine

She saw lots of people die after that.

Her touch is incurious, absent. It creates no image in her mind. She doesn’t need to see herself. It’s not as if anyone else is seeing her.

They should both be safe now. But Riley won’t raise her eyes any farther than she’s already done. Because should be is not is. People have died screaming because of should be.

In the end, maybe it’s disturbing how easy it was to adjust. How easy it is for the worst things imaginable to become normal.

It’s stunned her, how many things don’t change much when so many other things do.

She’s seen so many horrible things by now, she believes herself numb, her emotional landscape eroded into slatey flatness by ceaseless storms. One more horror should make no difference.

Last times are last times. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether you remember when specifically they happened. What matters is that everything stopped then, and nothing came after. Only they did. That’s the truly crazy thing. Somehow they did. Somehow it all just keeps on going.

You make things normal by being normal in the midst of them.

Does it count as not seeing, if you aren’t aware of what you see?

Riley’s eyes are brown, like her father’s. But her mother’s are blue. Were blue. If that mirror were here now, and she could look into it, what color would her eyes be? You could always go ask Ellis. Ask Ellis to look and see. You might even get an answer before you die.

Everyone is infected. Some of us just hide it better than others.