The Here and There of a Wandering Mind
“Everything is finite,” he says as he cuts the fresh loaf into tiny pieces. “Even this, here.” He takes a chunk and crumbles it in his hand. “See?” He stares at me with grey eyes and a lopsided smile. “See?” He askes again. But it is not a question. I nod.
We were on the pavilion, walking in circles. The evening sun paints warm pinks and calming blues on the low-hanging clouds.
“Everything is finite,” he says again and stops in his tracks. “Finite. Fi-nite.” I try to block it out, to imagine that he’s not there, but how could I? “Fi-nite. Fi-nite.” Stop it, I think, and I want to yell, but I am past that now.
“Fi-nite.”
If it weren’t for that accident, things would be so much different now. That bloody accident. But nevermind.
“Work with what you’ve got,” Mamma always said. “Even when you think you have nothing.”
“But Mamma, what if I have nothing?”
“You always have something. Your will, your courage, your imagination.”
A few benches from us sits an old lady. Her pink glasses catch my eye. She smiles while reading from a book and laughs softly. I watch her: old, yet young. It feels like I’m a thousand years old. She notices me and nods.
