The Binding

by Bridget Collins

Before this, I’d never been ill in my life. I never knew that my body could betray me, that my mind could go out like a lamp and leave nothing but darkness.

Here the clock in the hall dredged up seconds like stones and dropped them again into the pool of the day, letting each ripple widen before the next one fell.

But the part of me that yearned for music and noise was the old, healthy part; I knew that silence, work and rest were what I needed now. Even if, sometimes, it felt so lonely I could hardly bear it.

We take memories and bind them. Whatever people can’t bear to remember. Whatever they can’t live with. We take those memories and put them where they can’t do any more harm. That’s all books are.’

Which was worse? To feel nothing, or to grieve for something you no longer remembered?

It makes one wonder who would write them. People who enjoy imagining misery, I suppose. People who have no scruples about dishonesty. People who can spend days writing a long sad lie without going insane.’

I stared into the fire, thinking of everything and nothing.

He’ll be dead drunk by the second course, and then I can sit and watch him decay into his plate.’

‘May your darkness be quiet and the light come sooner than you need,’

the scent, not of warmth, but the promise of warmth.

Maybe I should have followed him; but somehow it went from too soon to too late, without the right moment in between.

Perhaps I hear my name the way we hear singing in the wind: because we want to find meaning in meaningless things.

Heat and sweetness pool on my tongue. This is like drinking sunlight.

‘Books want to burn,’ he says.