Alara
@paperthin
“For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
Everything I am came from her, she was my Big Bang.
Reklam
Their laughter echoes in each other’s chests, and then he says: “I miss all our most ordinary things. Breakfast on the veranda. Weeds in the flower beds.”
She takes a breath, then answers: “I miss the dawn. The way it stamped its feet at the end of the water, increasingly frustrated and impatient, until there was no more holding back the sun. The way it sparkled right across the lake, reached the stones by the jetty and came onto land, its warm hands in our garden, pouring gentle light into our house, letting us kick off the covers and start the day. I miss you then, darling sleepy you. Miss you there.”
“We lived an extraordinarily ordinary life.”
“An ordinarily extraordinary life.”
She laughs. Old eyes, new sunlight, and he still remembers how it felt to fall in love. The rain hasn’t arrived yet.
“Why are you holding my hand so tight, Grandpa?” the boy whispers again.
“Because all of this is disappearing, Noahnoah. And I want to keep hold of you longest of all.”
“The amount I love you, Noah, the sky will never be that big.”
“Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we’re big,” Noah tells him. “What did you write?”
“I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first.”
“That’s a very good answer.”
“Isn’t it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it’s just children and old people who laugh.”
“Did you write that?”
“Yes.”
“What did your teacher say?”
“She said I hadn’t understood the task.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said she hadn’t understood my answer.”
Reklam