Friday Figment: SORRY SUNLIGHT

         
The sun has some nerve, gleaming through the iron framed windows as if it had not ignored our prayers for the past twenty days of the greyest rain. 

The garish rays glare through that blasted window Mary rubbed clean last night, when thoughts of grief and mourning were far from me and this family. 

Of course we considered the possibility of death frequently—yes, too frequently—but for half a year we had managed to keep the fear as far and unacknowledged as the faded, distant stars, the very ones I had insisted on being able to see when I scolded Mary for leaving streaks. 

I stood over her shoulder insisting she dig her tattered fleece over it again and again until I heard the glass rubbed so raw it squeaked.

Now the sounds in the room are children’s screams scouring at my resolve to hide my feelings, to protect the sons from seeing that I too am destroyed. 

Let them sorrow over their slain mother alone, believing no one else suffers the depth of their loss in quite the same way they must endure it now. 

For one hour I watch as that wretched sunbeam moves in a mundane crawl over her young, colorless face. 

When Mary finally arrives she whispers, herding the weeping babies out the door to confront the rest of their uncertain morning.

The door shuts, but the sound unlocks my restraint; I heave my chair at the sunlight, and the taintless window shatters in chimes of sharded glass.

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