All the Forgivenesses

by Elizabeth Hardinger

Daddy mounted his horse, muttering, “Whose child are you?” Nobody’s is what popped into my mind. No-fucking-body’s. It about took my breath away I even thought that word.

It was as if Mama was what she done, and not who she was. It wasn’t nothing I’d thought about before, her being somebody like everbody else, and now I’d never know her, not that way. It made my skin cold to realize how long eternity was.

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.

Sometimes life scrapes your insides raw.

As time went by I felt my black misery calling to me, only this time I pushed it away. I seen clear, as clear as anything I ever seen, that this time it would kill me if I let it. I felt like I couldn’t dip a toe in it, I had to harden myself against it, and day by day I stared straight ahead and swallowed back my feelings and got stronger. I found out, I could wake up ever day and do what had to be done, and I let it be enough.

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