All the Names They Used for God

by Anjali Sachdeva

Every moment of her long existence echoes through her like the unfading peal of a bell, things she would rather forget every bit as loud as those she would remember.

He can think of nothing to say, though he knows his time is slipping through his hands like the tail of a rapidly shortening rope. It will burn his fingers with its passing and leave him clutching at empty air. The very thought makes him tired.

Sometimes John thinks he has always known this poem, that it has underlain his life like the seeds of a field, waiting for the ray of sun that will call it forth into the world. Other days he thinks he will weave it together from images and sounds and bits of twine that he has found here and there through the years and stored in his pockets until he had need of them.

There was even a time, decades ago now, when he began to write the poem, but it withered in his hands like a plucked flower. And so he learned to leave it alone, to let it grow in silence, until the silence consumed it, until the words fell asleep again beneath his skin. Now he wonders whether he will ever find them.

When these things have never happened to you, you think, I would rather die. But the truth is that it is not so easy to decide to die. And when, suddenly, you have the option to live again, that is not so easy either.

Wondering whether you can really leave a girl to die alone in a motel room, and what to do if you stay.