The Last Whaler

by Cynthia Reeves

Is anything truly hidden in a long marriage?

It feels good to hammer nails into wood as a new town rises from the devastation. But the reconstruction is a kind of cover-up, a kind of forgetting. I’m part of that forgetting.

Mother used to say that to commit to an idea gives you power.

There’s a great deal of silence in marriage. Silent hopes, silent longings, silent pain. It’s a wonder any marriage survives such silences.

In your world, there was a clear line between good and bad. So much easier to judge people that way.

How is it that the songs we’ve repeated for years suddenly seem to speak to us? It’s as if we mindlessly sing and recite until one day, we finally listen.

Of the treason trials, our great writer Sigurd Hoel has asked, “Who among us is so pure that he can stand up in public and say, ‘I’m innocent’?” No one.

Time seems so fragile it should be kept in a gilded cage like an unusual bird. Or conserved in a leatherbound portfolio, like a rare flower.