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Stars


A-Z story installment S
The last bit of this story, although the alphabet isn't quite done
Life can be confusing...



She carries the little bundle up the stairs to bed. Echo curls under the quilt. Claire makes a wall of rolled up blanket behind her, to stop a fall, anchors it inside the sheet. She strolls back to damp the fire. Her ribs ache. The floorboards are smooth and cool underfoot. She pauses at the window. Stars ping out in a thickening sky. There they are, millions; millions of stars, casting down light in diamond lines, all through space, millions and millions of stars. She sits at the window seat, her hand pressed against the glass. She cries without effort.

Shadows get deeper, they overspill, make a rising tide all through the small house. There is enough illumination left to find a match. Claire lights a candle, treads back upstairs, her silhouette lurching by her side, slips into bed.
‘Obscure,’ she whispers, ‘a speck, nothing more. Unique to the one who holds it.’
Her eyes are lead-lined, impossible to lift.  Light whittles down to the width of a plumb line, and she follows it into the depths. 



Comments

Suze said…
Lis, I read 'Resuscitate' a few nights ago and this earlier, as well. I tried typing in test responses to your comment on this one. I'm glad to see things are back to 'normal' around here. (Haha.)

These last two posts were breathtakingly beautiful. And I mean that literally because I was really moved and am fairly certain that they both did actually take my breath away. There is such a purity about the way you see the world. It's not naive, and it's not in any sort of denial. Quite the opposite.

When I was blogging as Girl Wizard, I had a tagline. It was the only blog I ever used a tagline for and it was, 'Unearthing the sublime from heaps of ordinary.'

That's you. That is perfectly, utterly you.
23 April 2013 at 23:10
Lisa Southard said…
(Am pleased to have resolved the comments confusion!) 'Unearthing the sublime from heaps of ordinary' is exactly what I aspire to... 'There is such a purity about the way you see the world. It's not naive, and it's not in any sort of denial.' ! Speechlessly content!!
24 April 2013 at 00:00
Suze said…
'Speechlessly content!!'

:)
24 April 2013 at 17:28
Dixie@dcrelief said…
So poetically delightful! I felt her eyelids close and I yawned(smile).
28 April 2013 at 20:06
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