The Rocking Chair Creaks

It's like balm, hearing the world of my book. Yet it's also the edge of a dangerous cliff. Until I have the time for full immersion, I allow myself only that one sense. To see or smell or touch or taste anything would risk a tumble that I don't have time for this exact minute.

And so I listen to the chair in Sylvia's childhood bedroom. It's creaking as her father rocks Cort to sleep that first night after his mother's death. I hear the boy's waning hiccup of grief, the crack of the floorboards when the father's weight comes forward in the chair, the low hum the man makes by habit now that he's been rocking children every night for a year since his own wife died.

Slowly he rises, hoping not to jostle the boy out of the forgetfulness of sleep. There's the rustle of the covers as he slides them slowly back, the indrawn breath of Sylvia (who's only a delicate-boned four--but wait, that's peeking) and the slow squeak of the bedsprings while he lays Cort down between his daughter and son.

The man sorrows. His tears will fall nearly soundlessly when he's safe in the private loneliness of his room. Tomorrow the sun will rise and he will flip pancakes for his children and this new motherless boy who has crawled into him in a way he fears. He will whistle and sing because they need him to show the way out of grief.

I keep my eyes open as I listen to Cort's even breathing, look out at the holiday lights of downtown Saint Paul as they brighten in the gathering dark, resist the urge to fall past this world into that other--into the touch of its velvet grasses and its silky puddings puddling on my tongue. I can resist the boy if I only hear him sniffle but show me the arm Sylvia throws around him in their innocent sleep and I will crumble. ~ Victoria Tirrel