The Binding

by Bridget Collins

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.

Which was worse? To feel nothing, or to grieve for something you no longer remembered? Surely when you forgot, you’d forget to be sad, or what was the point? And yet that numbness would take part of your self away, it would be like having pins and needles in your soul . . .

What is it like to steal a soul? To take misery and make it . . . innocuous? To heal a wound so that it can be inflicted again, for the first time?”

Nothing had changed, and everything had: life went on, overflowing with sweetness, ordinary and extraordinary at once.

If I could express to the gentle reader one fraction of the joy that filled me as my dearest Agnes smiled at me under her crown of flowers, I would count my sacrifice well made . . .