These Silent Woods

by Kimi Cunningham Grant

Thing is, once you’ve crossed, once you’ve done almost everything you ever said you wouldn’t do, you also lose your sense of assurance that you won’t do those things again.

They tell you, it’s war; it’s different. But it’s not, not really. That’s just what they say so you can try and live with yourself. Thing is, though: you will always know what you did and what you took and what you lost and it’s your life, it’s all part of you, like it or not, and you can never truly separate yourself from it. I signed up for it, I followed through. I accept responsibility. My point is just that you can never really be free from the things you’ve done, and that’s that.

We stand there, the two of us, and I consider what might have been. How close we’d come to something like happiness, here, that week of Christmas. Its wings had brushed against us: an almost.