Looking Glass Sound

by Catriona Ward

The water slips over me. And it is nice – somehow comforting to be a small shape in the vast sheen – to be reminded of my smallness by the large world.

There’s a look in her eye like she knows, somewhere deep down, that her time will be cut short. It’s strangely common, I have found, with photographs of the dead. It’s there in their faces – what’s to come. But of course that can’t be true. It’s us who are left behind who see it. Who put it there.

No one told me that grief would feel so much like fear.

Darkness falls like a stone; it’s the time of year you can feel winter reaching out for you with a cold hand.

Rich people like to eat like children. I’d have written that down, once.

Snow falls on the envelope, leaving little damp marks. I take it and hunch over, protecting it with my body. Snowflakes settle softly on my back.

But under the cinnamon chewing gum Alton smells of nothing – as if he doesn’t have a body at all.

The human heart is deep and dark with many chambers. Things hide down there.

I think about what happened last night and his mouth and suddenly everything feels very hot again. I feel transparent, like anyone who looks at me can see what I’m thinking.

He took the most important parts of me away when he went.

You have to coax anger along, otherwise after a certain time it dies.

As I get older I see more and more how fluid a thing time is. There are so many ways to slip in and out of it. The wonder is that we ever stick in the now.

This all happens on Monday, she thinks, but it might have been Tuesday. Afterwards it bothers her that she can never be completely sure.

Waking is like being torn apart.