The Girl

The girl that Trev loved on that fateful gray day.

Scene: Morning of Trev's departure. Girl sits at table, letter open, warm snizzle turning cold. Her mother stands at the sink washing the morning dishes.


Mother: You going?

Girl: No, I don't think so.

Mother: I think you should.

Girl: Yeah, well, I don't see the point.

Mother: What does he say in the letter?

Girl: Same as always. Loves me to the end of hyneria and all the rest.

Mother: I meant about today. What did he say?

Girl: Wants to see me. Last time, something he wants to say.

Mother: You should go.

Girl: Why?

Mother: He loves you.

Girl: He has a strange way of showing it.

Mother: He's young.

Girl: He's strange.

Mother: I still think you should go.

Girl: I don't love him. And even if I did, what would it matter. He's got a ticket, not me. It's not like he is inviting me to go with him.

Mother: Go for me.

Girl: What does that mean? For you?

Mother: He will kiss you.

Girl: Yeah?

Mother: Have you ever been kissed by someone who loves you? Kissed for the very last time? Kissed not to be kissed, but kissed in the moment in the wish that it was eternity? He will kiss you like that. And you know what, I want to hear about it. I want you to come back and tell me what that was like. I want to know what it is like to be looked at with those eyes, to be held in those arms, to have his soul pressed against yours and to feel lips against yours that tremble with things said and unsaid.

Girl: I don't see the point.

Mother: The point is, everything is not always about you.

Reviews

[Lorraine Pearson]

Twisted twist! Mom is asking her daughter to go be with a guy she finds strange, so he will kiss her with a "meaning" that will be worthy of tale telling... my how your mind works! I still don't know who this mystery man with the silver tongue is-- oh the chapters I'm going to have to pilfer through! LOL.
~L

[AutumnStorm]

The one and only time, presumably, that we shall hear from this woman, this mother, and you have embedded her. So rich is the impression that she gives, this chapter stretches clear through to her youth and one wonders does she advise because she took her chances or because she did not. And what were those chances. We know that the letters went unanswered, but the buck needn't stop there. It could be for example that the declarations of love began after the storms had started, when the inevitability of what would happen to the home planet had been realized and perhaps, as some are wont to do, the girl was of the same frame of mind earlier as she is on this day. Too easy it would be to think that way for some. Of acceptance, of seeing only the unchangeable facts. Those are the windows, or some of them. But as it stands, the words as they are written, the mother wanting for her daughter, very much more so than for herself, and thoughts too perhaps of the young man, a happy ending of this particular 'chapter' shared before it their stories divide in very different directions, but for her daughter, her daughter whom she knows will not live a life as long as she, a daughter whose chances at loving and being loved whatever they may be are limited by time now. Poignantly expressed is the wish that she be "kissed in the moment in the wish that it was eternity", desirously, wistfully, no more than all of those.. So very wonderful is this chapter.

[SPINNING ON that dizzy ..]

OMG this is so good - just went down the list of chapters and stopped here.... I laughed right out loud - I want this mother, I want to be this mother to my daughter, I want that kiss - I have had kisses like that.... oh, this is so good. Will read more and more.

Kath