News that comes from the depths of the ages or the depths of the flesh; you can't tell.
One day—there—a clap of thunder. It bursts from your flesh and tries to enter your flesh again. It beats at the portals of your heart, besieges your ears, howls round your entrails, but there is no place for it, no part of your body wants it, your soul retreats to shelter, your heart drips black blood, your mind goes round and round. News, News! Your beloved is dead!
No need for the thunder to break. I knew it was brewing in me.
When we used to come back from work and I kissed him with this very mouth and embraced him with these very arms, pressing him so hard that he laughed sometimes, it was premonition of the News that kept my lips sealed to his cheek so long, and turned my arms into iron clutches, and gave me warning when I woke up, and frightened me in the dark.
We used to talk about it and try to imagine what separation by death would be like. "If I die, if you die." We wanted to provide against it, we had accepted it.
My beloved, the knowledge of misfortune is not the misfortune itself; the knowledge of death is not death itself. When we were together we never imagined I should suffer so much. When people are together, they can't imagine what it is to be alone.
It is like childbirth over again, I assure you: I remember your face when I shrieked in travail. I am more torn now, and you are not here to hold my hands.
Why do they all say suffering is necessary and ennobling? I can testify that suffering doesn't do any good.
I used to be a gay, active woman, who went about with chest expanded, a body full of pleasure, lips like kisses, and cheeks alive with color. I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and stay up until late at night. After the day's work in the evening I'd say "to-morrow" as if anticipating the loveliest day in the world. I had poverty, laughter, an appetite, I had a perfect union with another, and I maintain that this counts. I led a life according to my own will; I had a bright child. I had all this, I was all this, this was my lot....
To-day I am a woman whose eyes are swollen and corroded with salt tears, whose features are sharpened, whose shoulders stoop, whose black dress bags on her reduced figure, whose eyes are turned inward, whose house is untidy and whose evenings drop into darkness without the lamplight. My little one has to call me.... I love him without a smile, and as for myself, I hate myself.