cosmic connections
‘If you can’t look after something in your care, you have no right to keep it.’
- Enid Blyton
***
We searched beyond the stars. We reached into galaxies and plucked moons out of thin air. We gazed at beaming green-lit plastic outlines before bedtime every night. Her fingers, so small and tough, would grasp onto my hair as we traced adventures led by Moon-Face, Silky and the Saucepan Man.
As she’d close her eyes, I would trace the characters on the cover. My childhood existed within these pages. When I opened them and read those magic words aloud, I heard my mother’s voice vibrating through me as if it were me lying on her chest and not this small head on mine.
I would tip-toe out of her room, staring for a minute at the outline of her small shape in her alcove. My heart ached desperately. Love always seemed to equal pain.
***
I am lying there now. On the bed where she once slept. My feet are tucked under me, curled into the length and space that she took up. I am staring empty-eyed, hollowed. I have never noticed that she was able to see the moon from here. But as I lie in still silence, gazing at her patterned curtains — ones that she would ask me to leave fractionally opened — the shining night-sun reveals itself to me. I’m sure it illuminates my red-tinged eyes and face and possibly even my unwashed hair. Light that once spotlighted her purity now serves to reveal my vapoured soul.
***
“See,” she concentrated, “like… like this!” She swirled the contents of her potion and beamed up at me.
I smiled at her, heart yearning for some form of cosmic closeness between her mind and mine so we would never have to part ways.
“Yes, love, I see it. You did a wonderful job.”
I pushed back the hair from her face and cupped her chin in my hand. As she grinned even wider her cheeks expanded to fill the space between my fingers. They were rosy and coloured with joy. Mars. She lit up bright and red, shining in different shades.
She pulled herself free from my grasp and leapt across my knees and ran squealing to the front lawn. Her dress and shoes had been mine as a girl, and it was strange to see a vision of myself with ringlets that glinted gold in the sunlight. I pushed against my knees to help me get off the ground and walked after her. I held her potion as I walked.
I saw it happen, but I didn’t understand until they carried her over. I had heard the squeal of tires but didn’t think to interpret the noise.
Her arm was limp. The sun glinted off the gleaming buckles on her shoes. Had they always been shaped like stars? I had never noticed that before. And the buttons on her dress, had they always shined like moons? Her ringlets had swayed gently, caressing the wind.
My entire galaxy crumbled as my knees hit the concrete.
***
“Are you Mum?” A pause. “We did everything we could…”
***
My heart is beating, yet there is no life in it. My hollowness seems to extend beyond feeling. I am convinced that someone has taken everything from inside me while I slept. It is the only explanation for the rotting numbness seeping across my ribcage. My eyes are dry as I continue to stare, unblinkingly, at the moon. I can feel my muscles spasming as they lie uncomfortably contorted in a bed two sizes too small for my frame.
I roll over.
It is breathtakingly unfair.
I drift into the shower. Steam rises, water tumbles. And they are the only two sounds I hear in this hollow, soulless, God-forsaken house.
Written by Evangeline Woldhuis.
Evangeline Woldhuis is studying teaching and creative writing. She enjoys writing short-story fiction and dreaming about the day she will get to write a sci-fi book with her father; although, Evangeline has also dabbled in poetry, songwriting and non-fiction.