Lia

“I must confess, that my
heart is like a frozen lake,
only pretends to be firm,
to shroud its tearful ache.
So tread over this heart,
as often as you like,
but one of these days,
if it feels your warmth strike;
its cold, thin surface
will abruptly break asunder,
and then it won’t resist
from pulling you deep under.”
― Akash Mandal

“It was later, when she got home and lay in the bed after her evening meal, that the day she had just spent would seem like one of the longest of her life as she would find herself going through it scene by scene. Even tiny details stayed in her mind. When she deliberatively tried to think about something else, or leave her mind blank, events from the day would come quickly back. For each day, she thought, she needed a whole other day to contemplate what had happened and store it away, get it out of her system so that it did not keep her awake at night or fill her dreams of what had actually happened and other flashes that had nothing to do with anything familiar, but were full of rushes of colour or crowds or people, everything frenzied and fast.”
― Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn

“It struck her that he might have told no one, not even his brothers, how he felt, and she thought how lonely that might have been for him.”
― Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn

“What she would need to do in the days before she left and on the morning of her departure was smile, so that they would remember her smiling. *”
― Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn