June 3

It feels strange to be awake again. I keep expecting the room to ripple into something else, some other dream facade to come forward and ply me into waking with screams.. I slept for nearly two days, and now i watch the sun come up and the world so normal sleeping and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the waiting. I know she’s here. Who else would have watched me sleep, covered me as I shivered and writhed in the cold sweat of dreams? She’s here, oh, yes, and she’s waiting, too. She’s got questions, and I know she won’t like the answers. Maybe she already knows..didn’t she know his name before? Wasn’t she the one who put that damn lock on in the first place? Where’s my mother? Dead. Where’s my soul? Sleeping. Where is he...inside me. In the dark, he’s still there. Oh, God, I hope I’m not

I hear her on the stairs. I’m going to go

June 3
late
I’m watching the moon tonight. I’m too tired to sleep, too shaken to dream, whose face will I see when i’m overwhelmed near dawn - If I can hold out that long. I’m waiting for a whisper, listening so hard my head aches with the silence, ringing ringing ringing ..If he doesn’t talk to me, I’ll go stone deaf.
While I wait and watch, I’ll tell you what happened this morning. She came up those stairs like a hellion, marched me down to the icy dawn porch and stripped me bare in front of God and everyone; anyone who came over the hill would have seen what only three have seen..myself, my mirror, and -- he makes three. I can feel the blush creeping up my neck now, but this morning I was too frightened and cold to be ashamed. Down i went into the tin tub of hot water and washed till my skin turned red and the soreness seeped out of my body. She stared at me as though she had never seen a young woman, as though her body had always been old and bent, her breasts low and sloping, her belly round with a womb that would never be full. I looked back at her, angry, my chin up and my back straight, taut in the cool air, showing her, showing her what I was and what I have and i am what he wants not you! I thought these to myself, I dared not speak, but I wanted to scream at her. I’m not a little girl, not now, maybe I never was if I could do those things in the dark, whisper those little truths that I hadn’t even known were true.....but I’m blushing again. After I dressed, we sat in the kitchen, avoiding each other’s eyes until she finally asked what I had been dreading to hear..but it was not what I had expected. -who’s been at you, girl?-she spat at me. Realization dawned; perhaps the old are not the wise. She didn’t know it was him..and I admit I was ashamed, and I replied with the first name to my lips.
I don’t remember feeling so ashamed as I did then..or so wistful. I still can’t be sure where that wish came from..why my body suddenly felt so hugely empty..as if I were struggling to reach some understanding, and I felt like confessing (why confessing? why am i suddenly thinking it was sinful? i need to think about this awhile)
like telling her everything, though the thought of saying what exactly happened up there

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