Grit

Carolee’s head lowered at the same time she raised the pages closer, her bony knuckles like fists protruding from taut bronze skin. Pinched between her fingers was a legal form, notarized and stamped. I could not yet read it, but felt an eerie quiet that hushed the room, filling it with a stillness that blew back onto itself and movement ceased until she began again, her stare going from the page in front to the top of her eye sockets, above to the ceiling. When her eyes fell, the absorbing returned. She repeated this several times, her mouth twitching, reading silently without talking until seemingly sated, the unspoken words coalesced into a grief that amplified the air into an outrage denser than the breath she’d let go of, turning the next heave and all that followed into fury even before a sound left her mouth. Silence can do this, be alive and dying at the same time.