Matrix

by Lauren Groff

It is because this prayer is enclosed within the chapel, she sees, not despite the enclosure, that it becomes potent enough to be heard. Perhaps the song of a bird in a chamber is more precious than the wild bird’s because the chamber itself makes it so. Perhaps the free air that gives the wild bird its better song in fact limits the reach of its prayer. So

For it is a deep and human truth that most souls upon the earth are not at ease unless they find themselves safe in the hands of a force far greater than themselves.

A woman’s power exists only as far as she is allowed; wise Eleanor understands that she must find her freedom only within such unbreachable form. Marie has a swift vision of herself as a tiny figure, climbing the walls; oh someday she will find her way over the queen’s rampart, someday she will be inside, out of the wind.

The queen moves so freely out in the world, now, she goes where she wishes with arrogance; she doesn’t understand that she too carries around her own abbey with her, an invisible wall-less abbey of people known to her, very large indeed, but still enclosed by the body and the mind. All souls are limited in the circles of their own understanding. At least Marie understands the limits imposed upon her; Eleanor in her great arrogance believes herself to be free.

Aging is a constant loss; all the things considered essential in youth prove with time that they are not. Skins are shed, and left at the roadside for the new young to pick up and carry on.

Collapse is the constant state of humanity, she tells herself; the story of the flood and the great ark that saved the creatures two by two is only the first refrain of a song that is to be sung over and over, the earth’s gradual and repeated diminishment, civilization after civilization foundering to dust, until the final death of the children of Eve with the apocalypse, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven angels, the seven bowls. In the end, the earth will crack and the wicked will be cast into the lake of fire.

She smiles at the version of herself at that time of pain, so young that she believed she could die of love. Foolish creature, old Marie would say to that child. Open your hands and let your life go. It has never been yours to do with what you will.