When Soon Becomes Later.

Soon (adv.): in or after a short time

“Mom … why do you have this piece of paper in here?”

“Put that back where it was!!!”

“I was just looking at it ……… Mom …. why does it say ‘soon’?”

Her luminous eyes, bright with laughter and the adventures of her day only moments ago, are suddenly clouded in sadness and I am angry at myself. All because I wrote four letters on a scrap of paper.

It’s been a year since I tucked the slip of paper away in my jewelry box, trusting its promise would be safe to bloom. I found it where it had been placed and discarded. Inked against a creamy background, it was an inconsequential word that had come to represent everything I was searching for. One word. Four letters.

A thousand wishes on faraway stars.

There is an undeniable truth in the post-mortem life that I have been so ignominiously handed. He will live in eternal perfection in their memories and imaginations while I will exist imperfectly and flawed. He will be remembered with tragic reverence and I will be judged and critiqued. He will be wished for, while I wish that someone would wish for me.

Soon is heavier these past few months as the door that was left open slowly begins to close and hopes and promises linger in my lonely oblivion. I watch quietly as the tiny birds perch delicately on my window sill in the quiet air far above the ground below and I wonder if the air deafens them in flight the same way that my singularity is deafening in its stillness. My fingers touch the unopened envelope that is the line-by-line decimation and resurrection of me.

I wrap my arms around her to keep the tears I have caused from dropping like shards of glass the way mine have begun to fall night after night when the house is still and dark.

“Ah, lovely girl. I am so sorry that I yelled.”

“Why did you get mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you, sweetheart. I’m angry at myself.”

“Why are you mad at yourself?”

“Because that tiny piece of paper is filled with Mommy’s hopes and dreams and frustration.”

“Why don’t you throw it out?”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

Because I keep hoping that soon will come.