there is no other way

She lay on the bed, a small shaking thing curled up in the blanket.

"You're not okay are you?"

A tiny whispered response, "No."

With matter-of-factness he lay down behind her, spooning her.

"That's okay. You've done so well."

"I feel like I just wanna give up."

"It's okay to feel it."

He curled around her in a fierce embrace, planting a firm kiss upon her shoulder blade and held on to her quaking frame as if his arms would hold her limbs together. As she heaved with wracking sobs that filled the quiet of the room his hand rubbed circles across her back, and she thought of him as a living soothing. Beneath the keen of her wail his tenor tones repeated a low mantra, "I'm so sorry, so very sorry, so sorry." Within she was at war: the need to feel the security of this kinship of presence to her grief, fighting with the fear that to let it in would be to lose it later.

"I don't know who to trust."

"You don't need to leave this house. Maybe not ever. But certainly not tomorrow. You're safe here."

::

“I feel like I’ve been climbing a mountain for nearly a year and the baggage is just too heavy. I’ve tried so hard... to keep it all together. I feel so alone and too high maintenance. But I just want to give up. I feel like I’m gonna completely fall apart. That’s what opened up...this deep rooted insecurity...fear of the abandonment caused by I know not what that underlies everything...a complete lack of presence as I caved in on myself...to feel so isolated... my defences are up now and I pushed them all out...as I lay there I went to a place where it'd truly be better for everyone if I left here. Quietly exited stage left...and to believe it would make no difference save for the better for them, for him...”

“What would happen if you fell apart?” asked the other.

“I think I’d… I guess I fear…I always fear... I’d lose... everyone,” she whispered.

“That’s a terrible burden to carry. No wonder you’re tired, love.”


::

They sit at the dining table, strewn with yesterday's grocery shop yet to be layed away. ("Maybe today I'll make bread.") She had slept and woken, feeling tired but with the hints of calmer clarity after dreaming. Made coffee and they browsed recipes while she lightly tapped the keys. "Good online connection today, the router's playing nice for once."

They talked of Coupland and the City of Glass and she admitted this was the only one she couldn't and hadn't read, "I feared it might make we want to go live in Vancouver." She smiled wryly, "I guess that makes no difference now. Why not..."

The buzzing of an incoming text vibrates against the wood, pulling her from contemplation of possibilities. As she lifts her eyes from the simple prayer for tranquility staring up out of the phone that lies in her palm, the other leans across the table and offers the book: a photograph upon the page of a tree in BC, five bald eagles sitting in its branches...

"I think I've found my writing chair." Right here by the window with the blue sky above the narrow yard and the yellow and red of the crane standing strong beyond the back wall - always there, always present.

::

LB, x

Written as the latest comment came in from anonymous... i'm glad anon, really glad... that you weren't in a place to see that truth was what caused me to be so disconcerted for you. but the last couple of days i had to learn it all over again myself...it's been tough... we live, we learn... peace be with you. with us all.

thanks to Level 5 Paul for the reminder of the complicated simplicity of it all...