Days Without End

by Sebastian Barry

It’s a dark thing when the world sets no value on you or your kin, and then Death comes stalking in, in his bloody boots.

We’re just going along while the sun hammers on us without anyone able to stop it. You could arrest sunlight for attempted murder out on the plains.

Just a moment of something that didn’t mean nothing. It gave me heart to see. Things that give you heart are rare enough, better note them in your head when you find them and not forget.

I guess the why is dark as doom but I am just witness to the state of things. I am easy as a woman, taut as a man. All my limbs is broke as a man, and fixed good as a woman. I lie down with the soul of woman and wake with the same. I don’t foresee no time where this ain’t true no more. Maybe I was born a man and growing into a woman. Maybe that boy that John Cole met was but a girl already.

You gotta give the world credit for beauty.