We watched the blood fall on the tartan lace garment. She missed the fabric and pricked her finger. He’ll leave you.” She was sewing a hem when she said this. I tried to explain that he was a nice boy – that even if he wore clothes that she didn’t approve of, that he didn’t shake her hand when he met her because he didn’t realize he had to, that he was still nice. She warns me because I’ve fallen in love, something she told me not to do. You can tell it’s disappointed her, by her expression in the mirror. She had been through hell and survived, and so it was easy enough for me to take her word as truth.
“You’ll see.” She shook her head and clicked her tongue at me. “It only takes once.” She told me, looking up from her knitting. She didn’t choose to have the parents she did. Her negative words bled bruises into my five-year-old brain. She is the ‘bah humbug’ of the south, the raising voice of the hikers in the mountains who call out for a lost companion in the rain. Now, she confirms that those prisons are eternal. Before, she believed that we were all confined to our own prisons within our bodies. It’s been years since I saw a smile come to her face. She had been alone ever since the winter previous, years ago, when the horses had frozen over and her hair stood up. “Life is solitary confinement.” Was the advice my mother had to offer me, from the time I was five years old, playing in the front yard amongst the smiling cypresses.
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