Famous Last Words

by Gillian McAllister

Sometimes, Luke tries to reassure Cam by telling her she cannot control situations, and there is nothing that Cam finds less reassuring than this.

There’s a word for this that she recently learned: fisselig. A German word meaning “flustered to the point of incompetence.”

There are no tears available. She has hardened, like clay, the moisture dried out of her into cynicism.

but her taste could be described easily in one word: escapism. There’s a German word for this too: Weltschmerz. Translated as “world-grief.”

The crying lasts less time these days, but still comes so readily, the same brimming wateriness she’s carried for years, like all of her emotions are just closer to the surface: a river perpetually about to burst its banks and overflow.

The thing about grief is that, when it happens to you, you go through the looking glass. Suddenly, everyone

else lives one kind of life, with one set of problems, and you another. You’re in a different world now, one you can never return from. And you only realize too late how good the first world was.