Cecilia Woloch

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun, breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock, and the rocks into dust, and the dust into earth again. I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence, just watching him. My father’s body glistened with sweat, his arms flew like dark wings over his head. He was turning the backyard into terraces, breaking the hill into two flat plains. I took for granted the power of him, though it frightened me, too. I watched as he swung the pick into the air and brought it down hard and changed the shape of the world, and changed the shape of the world again.

My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow; she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled. She listens for her heart: each breath is shallow. For years her hands were quick with thread and needle. She used to sew all night when we were little; now she sleeps with the Bible on her pillow and believes that Jesus understands her sorrow: her children grown, their father frail and brittle; she stitches in her heart, her breathing shallow. Once she even slept fast, rushed tomorrow, mornings full of sunlight, sons and daughters. Now she sleeps alone with the Bible on her pillow and wakes alone and feels the house is hollow, though my father in his blue room stirs and mutters; she listens to him breathe: each breath is shallow. I flutter down the darkened hallway, shadow between their dreams, my mother and my father, asleep in rooms I pass, my breathing shallow. I leave the Bible open on her pillow.

Didn’t I stand there once, white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper, swearing I’d never go back? And hadn’t you kissed the rain from my mouth? And weren’t we gentle and awed and afraid, knowing we’d stepped from the room of desire into the further room of love? And wasn’t it sacred, the sweetness we licked from each other’s hands? And were we not lovely, then, were we not as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?