Panenka

by Ronan Hession

Too much of his life had involved making mistakes that carved deep grooves into the lives of those around him. Who was he to be wise now?

Humans are by nature romantic creatures. By that I don’t mean full of love: I mean that they like the idea of things more than the reality of them.

Habituated loneliness was bearable, but the heart was not built to endure glimpses of what it could never truly have.

A tragedy has no cause until it has happened.

‘Do you know what resonance is?’ ‘Resonance?’ ‘It’s as though one person sounds a bell in their heart, and if the other person has the same bell inside them, it rings too.’

When she turned back to face him, he noticed that a stray hair had come out from behind her ear and was caught on the side of her mouth. He considered for a moment what it would be like to be the one who could reach out and return that hair to its place.

‘Sometimes, as I get older,’ she said, ‘I wonder whether all that’s left are the unfixable things.’

She was right, of course; she always made true things sound simpler than they were.

Loneliness is a torch: it can show you things about yourself.