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It’s what she once wanted but two people hardly ever want the same thing at any given point in life. It is sometimes the hardest part of being human.
In fact, she was at her best with stories. On those rare nights they saw her pluck things out of the air and break them open before their eyes. They would leave remembering not the fine old house that always impressed them or the man with the worried look that owned it or the strange flock of teenagers but the woman with the dark brown hair which got looser as the night went on and her pale hands plucking unlikely stories like green plums that ripened with the telling at her hearth.
the tusk of chimney smoke,
Brown oak leaves are twisting in dry spasms around the yard.
He led her across the floorboards same as a cat’s tongue moves along a saucer of cream.
On her wedding night she felt springs coming up like mortal sins through the mattress.
When she moved to Dunagore she was not yet forty but it was past the time when she could bear a child.
Kinda early
beside the mast whose evening shadow fell into her rooms.
What tbe hell is that???
like two still hares across the Cliffs of Moher.
The swallows were long gone and any blackberry still clinging to its b...
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Being superstitious, she kept his clothes. If she gave his clothes away he’d not have to go naked in the next world.
although she did not come from Clare, she knew nothing good ever happens in a dirty house.
Lol!!
Neither was she gone nor did she sleep long enough to let fire die.
If she believed in the forces of nature she was yet determined to avoid bad luck. She’d had her share of bad luck so now she never threw out ashes of a Monday or passed a labourer without blessing his work. She shook salt on the hearth, hung a Saint Bridget’s cross on the bedroom wall and kept track of changes in the moon.
Ponies stood with their backsides to the wind as though the wind would fertilise them.
Every creature seemed capable or on the verge of flight.
To be an adult was, for the greatest part, to be in darkness.
she would do her best to keep people at arm’s length for people were nothing but a nuisance.
Josephine, the sleek brown goat
Only one goat???
twelve years,
What???
Putting the past into words seemed idle when the past had already happened. The past was treacherous, moving slowly along. It would catch up in its own time. And in any case, what could be done? Remorse altered nothing and grief just brought it back.
She was constantly afraid to take the smallest step in any direction. The greatest lesson the priest had taught her was the lesson of where one step can lead.
Grey light framed the trembling curtains.
The wind was so loud it shouted like a man.
