It Was The Oldest Sound

Soul. The Word Rebounded To Me, And I Wondered, As I Often Had, What It Was Exactly. People Talked About It All The Time, But Did Anybody Actually Know? Sometimes I'd Pictured It Like A Pilot Light Burning Inside A Person--a Drop Of Fire From The Invisible Inferno People Called God. Or A Squashy Substance, Like A Piece Of Clay Or Dental Mold, Which Collected The Sum Of A Person's Experiences--a Million Indentations Of Happiness, Desperation, Fear, All The Small Piercings Of Beauty We've Ever Known.

The Translucence That Comes When Life Hardens Into A Bead Of Such Cruel Perfection You See It With The Purest Clarity. Everything Suddenly There--life As It Truly Is, Enormous, Appalling, Devastating. You See The Great Sinkholes It Makes In People And The Harrowing Lengths To Which Love Will Go To Fill Them.

Finally, I Began To Write About Becoming An Older Woman And The Trepidation It Stirred. The Small, Telling "betrayals" Of My Body. The Stalled, Eerie Stillness In My Writing, Accompanied By An Ache For Some Unlived Destiny. I Wrote About The Raw, Unsettled Feelings Coursing Through Me, The Need To Divest And Relocate, The Urge To Radically Simplify And Distill Life Into A New, Unknown Meaning.

When He Spoke, The Roughness Was Gone From His Voice. "i Could Tell You I Did It. That's What You Wanna Hear. I Could Tell You She Did It To Herself, But Both Ways I'd Be Lying. It Was You Who Did It, Lily. You Didn't Mean It, But It Was You.

You Think You Want To Know Something, And Then Once You Do, All You Can Think About Is Erasing It From Your Mind.