It's Still Life

And in the end,” she said…

        It’s my eleventh year, far from home, but oddly, I’m at home here—twilight in the garden, the sky open wide to a single star. It’s summer; I often sleep on the porch, and she says, “It’s not what we may be, it’s what we are.”

        Her hand moves a lock of hair away—claims hair in my eyes will make me blind. “You are a shy flame,” she says, “and one day, a man will touch this face.” Somewhere inside me, I’ve stopped listening… until she adds, “You have a right to love and hate, but hate honestly.”

        Summers with her were a perplexity. “No fire could burn us… nor winds tire our wings.” She said things like that, like stars are gilded flies—

“…and in the end, there’s a lullaby for suffering,” she said.