Nesting

by Roisín O’Donnell

From a distance they looked happy. It was only when you looked closer that you could tell they were screaming.

She has become the house. The toppled chair. The smashed bulb. The broken handle. Her bones and blood.

She has done all of it. Her life has shrunk down into a rock-hard kernel, and that kernel is her kids.

Made a religion out of motherhood. A cult that blocked out everything else.

A crime scene yields no emotional evidence. We stand on the battlefields waiting for the voices of history to hit us, and all we hear is birdsong.

Happy ever after takes different shapes. For her, happy ever after looks like this: her three children cuddled up in bed, sunlight spilling through rented curtains. This is happy. This is ever after. This is peace.

‘People often talk about targets of domestic abuse as weak. What they don’t see is our strength. We’re not targeted for our weaknesses, you get me, Ciara? We’re targeted for our strengths. Your kindness is your strength, and he is taking full advantage.

‘Listen to your body. Everything else can be twisted, but the body knows the truth.’

Is this all love is? People helping each other? That overused Corinthians reading at her wedding. Love is patient, love is kind. But perhaps the Corinthians got it completely wrong. Perhaps it’s the other way round. Kindness is love. That’s all there is. There’s nothing else.

Is this the final act of love, refusing to see someone ageing?

She sees now that writing out a story is unknotting it. Flattening the scroll. Deciphering the codex. Making it clear. Put words into the right order and this is what you can do: break the spell.