Prologue

by Sarah Jane Souther

I thought of how I love so much, still, with a love that will never come back to me. I thought if I thought about it enough I could breathe my way into breathing again. Inhale, exhale, inhale. Forget, remember, forget. Terrified of all the ways I could no longer reach out and touch you, I dreamt of them at night.  And in the morning when I woke, I dreamt again, eyes wide, staring at the ghosts in my room. They all looked like you. Spoke like you. One time, I dreamt you were reading to me. I woke up and your voice echoed against the walls. I smiled. And then I screamed. 

This thing we call the human heart, it is loud, so loud it deafens everything else. The birdsong, the trains underground, the still, small voice of God. My heart beats. One. Two. Three. I look around and realize everyone else is just the same. Five. Six. Seven. They too beat with the wild call of wanting, the untamed sound of grief. Eight. Nine. No other sound can find a way in. The noise swells and rises and spills all over the sheets. “I miss you.” And that is all my heart says. Perpetually, insatiably. Ten. I think of myself now, like a song running out. 

I asked Francine about this and she said grief gets quieter with time, lets the other melodies in. Piano notes, the hum of crickets, autumn in the leaves. She said one day three summers after Alan died, she found a place at the park where her heart was quiet, finally.  And she stayed there a long time. She said after a while, it was the silence inside her that seemed loud. And then she smiled at me and she touched my cheek and she said, “Emily, my dear, we always knew that love could end like this. And still, we took the risk.”