The Safekeep

by Yael van der Wouden

But it was fine: she read, she took walks, she and Hendrik made up stories about the people who drove by in cars. And then Louis moved out and life got quieter, and then Hendrik ran away and life got quieter still. Rooms turned cavernous.

There was no one now, no one to walk through the door unannounced, no one to open and close a drawer in the other room.

She saw herself clawing into the walls, taking root.

She thought that might have been joy, or something like it. Something that feels sad as much as it feels like love.

Isabel touched her hand on passing: her smallest finger to Eva’s smallest finger. A touch, a hook, and gone.

She had held a pear in her hand and she had eaten it skin and all. She had eaten the stem and she had eaten its seeds and she had eaten its core, and the hunger still sat in her like an open maw. She thought: I can hold you and find that I still miss your body. She thought: I can listen to you speak and still miss the sound of your voice.

Mother used to tell a story that Louis, four years old, had cried a full evening because he could not be a dog—could not turn into a dog.