The Widow's Watch

[thewidowswatch]

He Will Return by Sea

I float up the stairwell. There are more feelings up there, morsels of who I used to be waiting to be savored like candies, sometimes sharp and sticky and sour, but a treat either way. The stairs lead to the room with windows all around, where I can sit and look out onto the shore and the town, eyes beaming like a beacon. He will return by sea, that’s right. I can almost remember. He took my heart out to sea, and he will return. Carried on the waves, he will bring with him our plans to marry, the children we will have, the laughter we’ll share, and the burdens we will shoulder together. I will wait on the watch. I will weep, and I will watch the seasons pass.

[thewidowswatch]

Nothing Grows

Often, get possessed by an anger which is born of boredom and frustration. I grow tired of weeping and ill of my own company. I wish for books—how I loved books before I came here. Why did I come here? Reading under a tree, or in front of Father’s hearth, was Heaven. If that was Heaven, then what of this place? This place where nothing grows, and the mind is left to chew on itself until the memories turn as rubbery and tasteless as gristle and the feelings leave the bones dry and brittle and abrasive as sand.

[thewidowswatch]

There is No Way

What is my name? I can’t recall. I can’t recall the smell of my home. It’s been replaced by the musk of this place. Dust and rotted wood. There is a quiet separating of the mind from the body most days where I sit ever so still and my mind grazes on what can be recalled. Summers by the lake, the sting of a papercut, the smell of roses. When there’s nothing left to recall will I remain here? Will I be reduced to the shadow of a sad woman in a window, too bored with herself to try to escape? There is no way out, no way back. For however long I’ve been here, for there is no true way of telling. I tried to taste the air outside, which I remember to be thick and salty with ocean mist. I can see the ocean, too. I’ve tried. There is no way. Mother used to say, where there’s a will there’s a way. Perhaps I’ve lost my will, because there is no way.

[thewidowswatch]

The Fall

There are gold flecks in my eyes. They weren’t there before I came to this place. I can see them in my reflection from the window, like lights from the town, dimmed and blurred by the weather. There are no other reflective surfaces in this house, but there is more here that cannot be captured within a reflection. I am trapped here, and I do not remember how it came to be this way. All I know is that I cannot leave. There are no doors, and the windows will not give. So, I sit, and I watch. The outside scenery changes rapidly. I remember, as a girl, waiting for the fall of the first leaf, or the bite of the first frost. I hope I remember; it may have been a dream—a thought planted by the beasts in this house. I’d like to think I waited for the change of the seasons with bated breath, patient and grateful. Now the seasons pass like the minutes. There’s snow on the sill of the kitchen window. I gravitate towards the sitting room, already the snow has melted, and the window is warm with the breath of summer. Mother says I’m to be married in the fall, but which fall did she intend? I’ve seen several just this afternoon. So, I sit, and I watch the seasons, and I wait.