The Cloisters

by Katy Hays

But that was the hardest thing about death: the unrelenting march of time forward, away from the person you’ve lost.

Still, I continued on. Feeling in my aloneness and the steady movement of my body the distance I needed from the day, the summer even.

None of us knew what to do. I had never witnessed death, only lived its aftermath. And in its wake, I found myself adrift, knowing there were no good decisions, no good next steps, only the awful certainty that time would continue, no matter how much I wanted it to stop, rewind.

was caught between the desire to destroy it all and hold on to it forever. The impulses were, I thought, the same.