Looking Through the Skylight

According to Camus, “Love isn’t a confrontation with the absurdity of the world; it’s a
refusal to be broken by it.”

But when your love is not a choice; breakage seems almost inevitable.

The angelic image of my sister against a sky-blue backdrop decays with each step I take
towards her, and with each step closer I can see her fragmented mind - piece me together
once again. Her lifeless eyes stare straight at me, or more accurately straight through me, with
all the meds she’s on it’d be a miracle if she could actually focus them. She’s as lifeless as the
muted figures on the 20-year-old TVs littering this graveyard. Grey skin, brittle white hair,
dead eyes and a disturbing assortment of bodily fluids on her ragged gown. She looks like she
just crawled off the page of a Stephen King novel, although I can’t actually picture her
crawling, or moving at all of her own accord. She has a distinct silhouette, created by her
unflattering figure on her undersized wheelchair. The swinging light above us moves it back
and forth as if it is waiting for the time to pounce. We all have that shadow. Some of us can
see it, following us around yanking all of our strings like fleshy marionettes…

“You’re looking well.”

She croaks, as my pen clicks open, and pad hits the desk.
“You shouldn’t be.”

I hoped that would be the last thing she said but she continues.

“You can’t just live your life without dealing with what she did to us. Stay here, I’ll help
you”
A short laugh escapes my lips,
“Here? The asylum?”

“I’ve told you it’s not an asylum, it’s a…”

Her eyes flicker around the room as if she hopes the air around her will morph into the word
she seeks.
1
 “it’s a… retirement home.”
She says triumphantly.

I reply,
“It’s not a retirement home it’s a crypt, locking all of you corpses away so you may no
longer torment the living.”.

A question escapes her rattling jaws.

“Why are you even here?”

I struggle to pick up whether this is said in offence or whether her mind has lost its bearings
once again.

“To visit my sister and read her my book. She must be around here somewhere, I can hear
her voice. Yet sitting in front of me is a cadaver in a wheelchair.”

I say tauntingly, despite the dampening amount of truth to it.

Air still fills her lungs and her heartbeat can still be felt by the earth, but to me she died a
long time ago. Her dreams mould her memories into fantasies about suspending mortal
boundaries; a grey owl takes flight at dusk. She dreams of having wings, or hooves or any
other form, serpentine motions never static. But she cannot be both the serpent and the owl
and the horse and the eel, so she remains on the ground laying below the jagged stones. A 9-
year-old buried amongst centuries of rubble, written into the arteries of the earth, old stories
and neglected potential feeding an imagination with miles of space to fill.

We stare at one another in silence for a while.

Music far away draws me into a dream, reality spiralling into an aether filled with the aroma
of cheap plastic, and the deafening hum of silence. Childhood ebbing and falling, the there
and the here in conversation or like a whispered exchange. It murmurs in the voice of my
father, the song he made me listen to that I used to hate, but one day suddenly grew to
appreciate when I saw what it all meant. It draws me to a room full of golden serpents.
Strangely I always had an affinity for snakes, their venom never feeling threatening. I
2
suppose many children feel special in that way, but if the time came none would test the
serpent because deep down we all know we aren’t as special as we like to believe. My
attention is drawn to the two identical doors, pathways into faded photographs, now
caricatures. What behind them remains…

Uncertain,

and yet the urge to enter is…

intoxicating.

Bedroom doorways open up to rooms unkempt, rooms rigidly ordered with large beds made,
a sister’s room full trinkets masquerading as ornaments. Ornaments drawing focus from the
decaying flowery wallpaper on the walls behind, slowly exposing blood red paint from the
room’s previous occupant. Sharp hisses alert me to the adders circling, falling off the
wallpaper all over the dark oak floor, in my ears, in my eyes, until I look as if I were touched
by Midas.

Brandy you’re a fine girl what a good wife you would be…1

In my reflection on the television I see a beam of golden sunlight glisten off my iris. The
muffled words from my parents barely reach me over the near deafening music from my
Dad’s iPod; disturbance swiftly follows.

I walk out of my room in the hall, the stairs start straight and then split equally in half,
converging again and again each level, always keeping the house perfectly symmetrical. I
take the left side, as always, to see into my Dad’s study on the level down, littered with
annotated drafts and face down books. On his shelf sits an armada of ships in bottles, slowly
moulding and fogging up. He tries to clean the inside but can never completely return them to
the state they began in. When you walk out of his room and look up to the roof, it oddly only
has one small skylight and no uncovered windows, illuminating the centre of the house but
bathing the rest in shadow. I never understood why the windows were never opened. My

1
Epic. (1972). Brandy (You're a Fine Girl). Washington D.C.

3
sister is already downstairs. I can hear panicked ramblings of economists talking about
markets collapsing coming from the TV in front of her. Obviously, my father just left as my
sister would never watch this if she didn’t have to. I sit next to her and wait. I can just make
out slivers of conversation piercing the minute cracks between the wall and door of the
kitchen. They’re planning something. My mind whirs in speculation as my unusually casually
dressed father and unusually silent mother sit beside us.

They wait quietly for what seems like hours, their eyes darting back and forth from each
other, the weight of the conversation looming over more and more.

“We don’t want you to feel like you have to choose sides, we realise it’s probably best for
you to spend time with both of us, but it’s your choice.”

It’s an easy choice. I’m obviously staying with both. Less drama that way. Plus, obviously I
should spend an equal amount of time with each parent.

“I’m living with Dad!”

This doesn’t surprise me, but it does them. Even Dad who you’d think would be happy that
he’s being anointed the favourite parent by her seemed to disagree with the decision.

“You don’t have to make this decision yet, you can try out different thi-.”
She cuts Mum off,
“I’m living with Dad”
They both rush off to the other room. I hear Mum blurt out,
“She’s too young to make this decision.”

“You didn’t mind her making the decision when we spoke about it earlier.”

“I thought she’d be sensible.”

“She’s 9 years old!”

“Exactly! She shouldn’t be making this decision.”

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 “We already gave her that choice. We can’t take it away.”

The rest of the exchange gets muffled as the kitchen door closes. I knew this was coming but
I couldn’t understand why money had any effect on how much they loved each other. Mum’s
obviously displeased with my sister’s decision but I’m fine. It’s not like we’ll never see each
other again but I’ll get a nice break from her half of the time. I don’t think it’s what’s best for
her, but what can I do?

I walk back up the stairs this time on the right, past the guest room, that’s now been so
overrun with my Dad’s work you can barely even tell the difference between it and the room
facing it. Once I reach the top, I push open my half open door illuminating the empty room
with small beams of sun from the overhead skylight.

A collage of sunlight and darkness over a sea of boxes greet my entry into the van. I don’t
think it’s fair that I have to be the one to carry them, I wasn’t the one that decided they were
getting divorced, I wasn’t the one that kicked my Mum out of the house, and I definitely
wasn’t the one who told them to be arguing right now. It shouldn’t be my responsibility. It
takes half anhouror so, but I eventually finish, and they don’t even care.

The new house isn’t bad. It’s very her. It’s smaller than our old house. But she says we don’t
need a house that big for just the two of us. Pure white walls. A single hallway intersects the
single story, with two bedroom doors facing each other in the middle, eventually leading to a
pristine living and dining room. Very stylised aesthetic, but very empty.

“Which room do you want?”

She asks.

It doesn’t matter really. Neither is different in size or shape. Each has a different view but of
identical looking steel towers and glass offices. It won’t really be mine. She doesn’t allow
any photos unless they fit with the colour scheme. Any slight blemish I make on the
alabaster…

5
No, this house was brown. Light brown like suits my Dad would wear to his lectures, and that
he would be wearing later when he lectured me at home.

Or was it…

It doesn’t matter.

Whatever the colour was she would’ve still been the same. She’d say I was her favourite
child, I was her priority. Yet every second sentence was about my sister nonetheless.

“Talk to her.”

“Convince her.”

Was I just not enough for her or was she just too proud to let my sister go?

Reality flows into fantasy or maybe I was in a dream all along. I float on my side, one eye
below the tide and the other above, the sea on the left and the sky on the right. The supple
figure of Venus convulses and flows along the smooth currents of sea. Below the murky
waters she sings a tune that bends with the ebbing tide as her dark form is reshaped by the
waves. Majestic turquoise pillars in the form of Scylla invite me below the tide, yet warped
structures draw my attention above. I step onto the sand, and behind me the pillars disappear,
and the waters grow still. Above me stand sandstone monuments denatured by crude steel
scaffolding and vibrant aluminium lettering.

I can still smell the salt in the air that day at the university, when I met Nicole.

The fierce winds whirl vortexes of salty vapour over me each second, causing my hair to go
stiff and stick up in an irritating spike. As I quickly take shelter behind the swinging door of
the university lecture hall I see a familiar back of a head. I’ve seen her a thousand times
before, a perfect stranger, perfectly strange, any more knowing would strip her perfection
away. Flawless skin, long auburn hair, and lively sapphire eyes. I barely know her, so it
cannot be love because the word love is too soon, it feels like it, but calling it love makes it
not love. It’s blank. Indescribable, unforgettable. Our eyes lock for an awkward second
6
prompting me to quickly look away. Now she definitely knows I was looking at her. I feel my
phone buzz in my pocket. Dad is texting me. He is asking me to come over and see them
both. He always has the worst timing. I refuse. He calls me now, eager to change my mind. I
need to take this somewhere else. As I walk away I accidentally brush past someone and hear
the mortifying sound of smooth metal grinding against concrete.
“Shit, sorry.”

“Don’t worry I’m sure it’s fine”,

she says cheerily.
“Look, not even a scratch!”.

I remember now… the house was red. Red like the dress she wore when she came home with
me for the first time and the small ruby in her necklace. The redness flows off the dress and
surrounds me, surrounds us. I shape it between my fingers into a wide ribbon that we slide
down into the dark emptiness below.

The streaking red lights ahead flicker and spark, until the car turns away and the darkness
reawakens my dead eyes. I haven’t seen these roads in so long, yet I can still find my way
along them perfectly. The bumps in the road jolt her awake but to me feel more natural than it
would if it were smooth. =. = and we silently
walk towards the house. Walking up to the door and seeing the inside of the house for the
first time since a number of lifetimes ago. She says it’s nice, but she cannot know. The
mismatched and discoloured furniture reflects a life once smashed apart and then hastily
cobbled back together. The wallpaper and ceiling paint are all peeling off as even the house
itself knows that it died along with my parent’s relationship and the walls are oil, abysses of
inky blankness fed by the decay of past prosperity.

2
My numerous calls are absorbed into the
silence of the wooden walls. We are the only
ones here. My bedroom is the same. The one
sanctuary from time’s corrosive touch. Story
drafts alluding to my future passion, surround
2
Munch, E. (1896). Two Human Beings. New York: MOMA

7
trinkets and juvenile novels. It’s the smallest room in the house but to me stretches centuries.
I’m reluctant to even let Nicole in with me. There were never women in here before. But then
again what is a woman? Someone who loves a man? There are men who love men and
women who love women. Someone with the capacity to give birth? Does that mean someone
who has their reproductive organs damaged is no longer a woman? How do you define them?
How do they define them?

When she turns on a lamp something clicks in my mind, transporting me a vast distance and
none at all. Next to this bed that is mine but not my mine where a child now lays, no older
than 10 years old. He sleeps peacefully until a girl attempts to shake him awake. Once he
finally leaves the comfort of his bed they sit, talk, and stare into the blank screen for hours
until it flickers to life. In it I see a heath blanketed in frost with two roads converging ahead,
within the small grey frame. The boy steps one way and the girl the other, but as I attempt to
follow them, I am ejected on a rough leather couch.

My Father stares tranquilly transfixed at the fire beneath the TV, as Nicole and I anxiously
await our dinner. His pale complexion is hidden by an unruly mass of facial hair and his opal
eyes are masked by the reflection of the fire he gazes at. He wears an all black suit, and on his
hand is a golden watch and a ring, both wedding presents from my mother that I was
surprised to see still on his body all these years later. I suppose we all are burdened by
accessories from our past, some are just more visible than others. Her numerous attempts to
start a conversation with him end in polite but short answers, as I said they would. Yet I still
feel myself growing steadily angrier at his inconsideration.

“When is she coming? Shouldn’t she be out here meeting our guest?”

“She will come down when she wants to. There’s no need to force her to do anything, she’ll
just be in a bad mood.”

“When was the last time she was in a good mood?”

“She’s in a good mood usually.”

“Just not when I’m over?”

8
“Well yes, because of everything your mother did to her and you living with her… she feels a
bit….”

I don’t remember much else from that night. I remember the cold night air, and the bright red
dress leading me away, and I remember the comfort of driving into the darkness with no
destination yet arriving somewhere all the same. Not somewhere expected. I precariously
tread the border between dream and nightmare, blind to my own needs and deaf to hers.

My phone buzzes on the table beside me. I know who it is. I know why he’s calling. He’s
lucky to be invited at all. So, it continues to buzz as my tie is clumsily tangled around my
neck.

I like what the ceremony represents yet I’ve never understood how someone could actually
enjoy their wedding. You’re the focal point of all of the most important people to you and
your partner, so any mistake you make will be immortalised in the minds of those closest to
you. You have to tell each other vows that mean nothing to everyone else and everything to
you. Then at the end you have to kiss before a mismatch of your dearest relatives and people
on her side that are virtually strangers to you.

Maybe I’m just thinking this now because I’m nervous, but I feel like I’ve always been this
way. There’s nothing I can do now though. Everything is already too far along, there’s no
way for me to stop it.

Three decisive knocks on my door signal the arrival of my father. He’s told to wait again. He
grunts in acceptance and takes a seat outside. Ironically the most scintillating the
conversation between us two authors ever was anymore.

Three lighter knocks come minutes afterwards.

“He’s not ready yet.”

“Surely he’ll let his mother in.”

9
 “He refused to let his father in.”

“That’s no surprise.”

“You need to let us in now, it’s almost time for you to go out there.”

The lock begins to turn but stops for a moment. I look through the peephole seeing my two
parents and a blank space where I anticipated a third person. I suppose it was naïve for me to
expect her to be here. Why would she want to come?

Their wide grins proclaim their excitement and their pride, but I can’t shake the feeling they
are once again just putting on a face so as to not disturb me with their own issues. It seemed
every time they were ever nice to me it was just to disguise some issue I’d later find out was
plaguing them.

When we were kids every morning, we would hear them fight, yet they still saw it fit to act
like nothing was wrong. Their passionately arguing faces distort to grins as I glance at them
through funhouse mirrors. Snippets of conversations and stray words flying somehow pass
through the clear walls but whenever I try to follow my exit is blocked. The faint words
follow me from afar.

“Why am I the one sleeping on the floor when this is my fucking house?”

“Why do you never do anything with them? They ask you if they can go to the zoo and you
say yes but then you never take them. Maybe if you did things with your children, instead of
writing your ‘masterful novel’ that reads more like a short story submission to cosmo, then
I’d let you sleep in the bed.”

“=. =”

“= = your mother= =”

10
The ongoing argument outside my room somehow fails to wake me completely, but my sister
pulling the doona off my bed does the trick.

The words,
“Go away.”
Sluggishly fall out of my mouth.
“Ok.”
She’d say slyly, as she moves a few metres away to turn on my TV. She sits on the dark
carpeted floor for a couple hours watching it on low volume until I wake up again. Then we
watch for a few more.

He stands outside the door for a moment composing himself. Absurdly thinking he can
conceal from us that their relationship is fissuring apart more and more each day, with a
couple of deep breaths and a handkerchief to wipe off his sweat and tears. In reality it just
exposes even more the threads of crimson popping out of his woollen white eyes and the dark
bags beneath them.

His face when he came in will be etched into my mind forever. Cheeks still moist with tears
of both sorrow and anger, mottled skin resembling the handstitched quilts his mother made
but my mother never kept. Most of all I remember his eyes. His passion turned them scarlet
but now behind them was no anger. Just disappointment and terror. Maybe about how he
never was able to do any of the things he aspired to, or maybe because he seems to be losing
the family he found instead.

I hear someone say,

“You know this was where it all went wrong for us. Well not this but the aftermath. The
expectations. The wedding was beautiful.”

But the lips of the man before me do not quiver. Surroundings quickly shift. My mother and
my childhood melt away.

“Don’t say that in front of him, I’m sure he’s already nervous enough and you can’t blame
him for what happened between us.”
My father says to her despite never expressing that view before.
11
I don’t even have the energy to take offence anymore. I don’t have the control. I feel like I’ve
been restrained in the passenger seat while someone else takes me away, yet despite my
disconnection I am crystallised in the moment, unable to look away. ==. .
= ==. , before I know it I’m at the end of the aisle
looking at all my closest friends and family. No, not all.

She walks in. Seeing her this way reminds me again of when we first met. It seems absurd
that I’m a part of this moment as well. As their heads turn it’s as if some divine being
photographed the moment and left us suspended. She once again is motionless, eternal. Just
like the photos I first experienced her through, and I once again feel like the shy child in her
class who never thought she’d be any more than a pleasant sight. =. =
Why=. e
= am=
I= I =. = . = N Not =. = Happy=
=?

Is that a cliché? Maybe. Isn’t that all marriage is? A more or less unchanging ceremony being
appropriated thousands of times every day.

Maybe that was but I’m sure this isn’t, my time with Nicole was meant to slow down, these
were meant to be our golden years, but in a blink of an eye my kids were gone and I was
alone again, I lost her, I lost them, I lost myself a long time ago, or maybe I simply am what I
am, is there really any continuity between our past self and our current self, Nicole definitely
isn’t the same, although in some ways she is, disconnected from me as always except this
time it’s on purpose, we were never going to stay the same as we promised but I had always
hoped we’d change together and that the day those hormones in our minds began to fade I
would fall in love with the new person she’d become, but our instincts failed us and our
curiosity took us elsewhere, took her elsewhere, I stayed, never wavered, I couldn’t give up,
not like my parents, I was meant to be better, I have to be better, if I’m not better I’m not
anything, it can’t be my fault its hers. It can’t be mine. It can’t be. It can’t.

No, the house was black. Empty. It was while Mum was working lots of small low paying
jobs to pay for it. I was the only one ever there. The same as when Nicole left.
12
My new living room feels incomplete without her here. Even watching my favourite film
with my boys is no longer enjoyable. I stare at the screen, see the characters move, hear them
speak. Yet in this state to me they are just that. Photons moving in and out of my field of
vision and nothing more. The only thing getting through is the music, but to me the 70’s hits
are still playing through my Dad’s iPod and they always will be.

My phone buzzing on the kitchen table jolts me awake.

“Keep watching, I’ll only be a second”

I know I shouldn’t be looking at her messages, but I can’t stop myself. I tell myself it’s like
treating an addiction, I have to remove her from my life in increments, but every time after I
do it the heart wrenching reality becomes clear to me, that she’s already gone, and I just can’t
let go. In her emails is an ad for a gallery. I never knew she liked art. Maybe she didn’t but
she now does. The painting at the top seems familiar. As I look at the woman she meets my
gaze and suddenly I’m in the theatre, watching existence morph around me like the images on
the screen.
3

But whose fault is it?

Is it her own responsibility to keep herself
happy and her responsibility alone?
If I leave my kids today, to find happiness, is
it my responsibility if they struggle if they are
responsible for finding happiness of their
own?
If it isn’t then who is responsible for her | my
happiness?

I sweep the tears and sweat off my face with my sleeve and head back in to the room. I can
feel the blood pulsing through the capillaries in my eyes, the heat emanating off them sadly
not enough to evaporate the tears rubbed into my red skin. I look at my boys. The wave of
3
Hopper, E. (1939). New York Movie. New York: MOMA

13
emotions hits them with so much force I can almost feel the splashback on my own face.
How do I tell them? I don’t want them to think it’s their fault. But I don’t want them to think
it’s mine. And I can’t blame their mother because I don’t want them to lose her completely.

The television shifts to the two roads once again, but my sister is |was replaced with an old
man I don’t | didn’t yet know. The brittle leaves riding the currents of time’s forceful winds
whisper | whispered in the voice silenced of my father lost. I enter, but this time I reach my
destination. My father’s face flickers | flickered back and forth over my son’s, and his
distorted speech becomes mine.

I walk back in the room, the two of them are silent. Taking in the spectacle.
For a moment the TV goes blank. It’s peaceful. But as it sputters back to life and the dialogue
comes pouring through I realise I can’t avoid it anymore.

I’m a little confused about the movie but Dad doesn’t want me to speak, he wants me to take
it all in. Dad’s phone rings. He says it’s work. I watch him glide up the right staircase to his
untidy study and he stays up there for a while. I catch the occasional word but remain
focused on the movie knowing how important it is to him that I enjoy it. He swiftly walks back
down the stairs, face sweaty and red. He says we need to talk about something, but I’m not
sure what.

“Boys, if your mother was moving overseas, would you want to stay here with me, or live
with her?”
“If your mother was moving, would you stay with her or with me?”

“I wish you could do both but with her so far away it doesn’t seem like we’d be able to make
a 50/50 situation work, especially when you think about your school. I’m really sorry I never
wanted this to happen.”

“She’s a grown woman, she doesn’t need you to stay there out of pity, she can take care of
herself. If you go with her you wouldn’t be able to have relaxing nights like this, her work is
all she cares about! That’s the reason you’re even being made to make this decision.”

14
 “It’s not her fault, it’s just she wants something different. She doesn’t really know what will
make her happy, but she knows it isn’t here.”

“I understand you wanting independence, but when you need someone to do anything for you
no one will be there to help. She obviously sees herself as her first priority, she didn’t even
ask you if you wanted to move!”

“I don’t know, I think she thought she wanted to settle down, have a suburban life and have
you guys, but now she’s realising that it was always just a stage not a destination.

“She has never really known what she wants. Do you really want to be living with someone
who makes decisions with no regard for those around her and makes those decisions on a
whim?”

“You want to live with her? You’ll have to go between school, houses, countries, while she’s
trying out different things. Are you sure? Do you guys think you’ll be ok living apart for so
long? You have barely left each other’s side since birth.

“Go live with her. You’re not hurting me, just yourself and your sister. Just know I’ll be here
if or when you decide to return.”

“It hopefully won’t matter at all. I want you to be able to be happy with or without me.
Otherwise you’ll end up like your aunt.”

And your father.

At the southern end of the park, where the two roads converge, I see a house, although I don’t
know if you could really call it that. Is it still a house if there’s nothing inside or merely a
tracing? The blue of the sky meshes with the blue of the walls and the black shadows
outlining it are all that can be seen. Through the windows lies nothing, not empty rooms,
nothing, blackness. Inside the blackness appears a hybrid of filial past and present. As it splits
I can see recognition in the face of my son and father, but as all things do in the breadth of
time - they quickly fade and leave me alone in a frosted moment.
15
 “If you weren’t even going to listen to me why did you come?”

Her shrill cry reaches deep into my unconscious mind, pulling a part of me out I didn’t think
existed anymore, and dragging me back to the ‘retirement home’ she agonisingly revels in.

A stray crackle of lightning from a disoriented storm catches a forest alight. Every single
emotion or stray thought from the decades spent appeasing her and attempting to sway her
with civility pour from my body into hers.

Then the bulb shuts off. She stares at me. No past me. At herself in the mirror behind me.
Moving her hand back and forth past her face, viewing herself dispassionately like a critic to
a painting or a reader to a word. She doesn’t recognise herself. Or maybe she doesn’t
recognise herself. The nurse said each day her memory recedes. Like a tree losing limbs in a
hurricane, there’s rarely enough time to grow them back, eventually all it feels is the stray
debris pinned to its trunk that will eventually topple it entirely.

No more words.

Maybe she no longer knows the right ones.

She just looks down at her body,

and looks at me,

with a small spark of gold bouncing off her still iris as the light turns on once again.

I gaze upon a tracing of the girl I once knew, a two-dimensional fragment and forever
nothing more.

16
17
Is this the end? No.
How does it end?
Every day I read this last sentence hoping It will hit her today, that she’ll return for a moment
and as cracks form in her delusion she’ll either break through, or shatter along with it. But it
never strikes. We stare at each other eternally, everything else fades into a tangle of white
noise. Shadows dancing in the corners of our lives, in our peripheral but never our focus. And
her mind is……During the last ice age there was a sheet of ice two miles high over the entire
continent of North America, grinding against the land, forming rivers and valleys that
remained even millions of years later. Even as the ice recedes its mark remains, and only
when it was gone could you see the full impact it had. There are days now where she seems
to struggle to recognise who I am. It’s becoming less and less likely with each passing
moment that she’ll ever truly hear what I say.
Less likely that it will end.

No.

This is the final chapter, the final line, the final word. My family never bound me, and I never
bound them. Reality manifests memory. Memory manifests memory. Memory manifests
18
Hades. And in Hades the three sets of eyes thrice as piercing as one crystallise your terror,
confining you in your own mind. We’re all told to remember the mistakes of the past in order
to not repeat them in the future, yet our focus on them means we do repeat them, every
minute, every second, and then everything is that mistake, we see it everywhere, it is in every
action, every intention, every thought. If you hear about a murderer escaping prison do you
forget about them? No, you see them in every reflection, every street corner… I was so
preoccupied with the possibility of another person leaving that I never considered why I
wasn’t leaving myself. Each day she becomes more like that child I was so close to, just
because more and more of her life is fading away. At least she’s improving now. Without me.
As my father would say “Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their
blunders.”4, he loved to footnote his ideas with Nietzsche, and fittingly he’s somehow still
siding with my sister even now.
I get up abruptly and unprompted, my body pulsating with naïve wisdom. I tuck my chair in
neatly and cringe at the shrill grinding of the metal chair legs against the concrete. The bulbs
around me no longer seem so bright, but the light from outside is blinding.

I look beside me at a girl who shaped me, her icy imprint forever carved into my mind. I
walk beside her to the door and stand under the frame as I know she can’t follow me through.

She says,
“Are you coming back soon?”
I say nothing.

It’s better for her that way. I hope she forgets me soon. I hope she forgets she loves me. She
is not part of my world any more, she is not part of the world below. I hope she will look at
that door for a few days and then like she usually does forget why she was looking in the first
place. Then the door will dissolve away, the walls will melt, both paths crumble like Tartarus,
and into the empty space she tumbles.

And then that last drop of water will adhere to the mighty shelf again, just to re-join its
struggle.

Or maybe it’ll follow the currents to foreign shores and foster the growth of something new.
4
Nietzsche, F., & Hollingdale, R. (2003). BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL(1st ed.). London: Penguin Classics.

19
 Or maybe it will never be itself again, it ended once it left the ice.

But a little part of her,

will rise through the skylight,

Break through the glass,

Out of the darkness,

into the world of the living,

for the first time,

in me.
Reference List

Epic. (1972). Brandy (You're a Fine Girl). Washington D.C.

Hopper, E. (1939). New York Movie. New York: MOMA

Munch, E. (1896). Two Human Beings. New York: MOMA

Nietzsche, F., & Hollingdale, R. (2003). BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL(1st ed.). London:
Penguin Classics.

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