All the Forgivenesses

by Elizabeth Hardinger

Then I had a memory light on my chest like a butterfly will, lingering for a moment, its wings quivering.

But then Mama also used to say, it was the ones that was hardest to love that needed it the most.

You do what’s in front of you, hour by hour, and you hope to fall asleep at night before you think too much about where you’re headed.

“Worry is interest paid on troubles you ain’t had yet.”

April 14, 1916,

the sun was low, and there was dry clouds spread out along the edge of the world like wavy threads, stripes of pink and orange and purple. The last of the light flared behind the clouds, giving each one a white halo.

Sometimes life scrapes your insides raw.

in April 1918, why, Sam and Harold’s unit did get called up for the Great War.

1922,

“The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” but to me it never felt like the wind let up.

1925

you have to have somebody to love just as much as you have to have somebody to love you. Maybe more.

1926

I was twenty-six.

About two-three years ago, he reckoned, when he was about five,

“It’s the ones like Dacia—the ones that are hard to love—”

“They’re the ones need it the most. Mom used to say that.”