Turning the pages so he could hear them I searched for a favorite passage.
I read as slowly and as distinctly as possible, allowing each word time.
P
Cercolas, mother, Aesop, Phaon...gone. When shall I go?
P
I have been unable to write for days. I have nothing to say...there is only emptiness.
P
Yesterday a nightingale sang, a song of tattered leaves, scraps of Nile, bits of Euphrates, papyrus against night, against impending doom, against depression. Tender notes whispered insanity. Other notes urged self-pity. Others shattered—with sheerest delicacy—any hope of contrition.
A feather drops...a pause. One could die during such a pause.
All of us wait—life waits!