Hawaii Pacific Review

by Billy O’Callaghan

After the dreams have come, the mornings feel like glass around me. Everything looks too bright, too well-preserved. My way of coping is to sit in the kitchen in silence and try to wait it out. I don’t close my eyes because the faces hang there, in that darkness, ready to loom, faces that will make me smile to see again but which will also bring deep sadness, knowing that they’ve been lost, that I have let them go. The house is always still then, silent apart from the acceptable sounds, the clicking of pipes in the walls, water running at a murmur, the paper-weight of my own breath and Barbara’s as she idles about small chores, maybe rain against the glass or the crack of snow shifting its weight on the roof. While the coffee percolates, I sit and try not to move or even think, knowing too well the traps and pitfalls that lie in those directions. Continue reading →