Rewound

Her hands, soft and clean of any blemishes, covered her mouth as she laughed. The kind of laugh that only love can bring. Her eyes scrunched to halfmoons and glistened as they reflected the light from the video on the screen. In such a black hole of a room, with only the off blue drench of a monitor to cheat the dark, she seemed to be another source of light in and of herself. As she spoke she continued the near obsessive fiddling with the small, heart-shaped, locket around her neck. It hung there as it had every moment since her mother had given it to her. The sliver also caught the light of the screen but only for the few moments she was not holding it tightly. It was as though it was a way for her to touch her own heart outside her chest. Since it was given with the love only a parent can feel, that warmth lingered no matter how many years had passed.

She told stories and laughed with the woman on the other side of the screen. The very woman who had given her that second heart that she now touched as though begging a gateway back to times gone. It seemed like hours they had talked, the conversation so familiar. She knew every word her mother would say and yet still laughed as honestly and as deeply as the first time. She still felt the lump in her throat when she said goodbye as she had the first time. Every time. So in this empty room, alone but not alone, she could be warm again and not only feel what it was like to be around people but to be around her family. Some days she felt as though she was reading the same sentence out loud over and over again. Many of those days the only movement she afforded herself was to stand, stretch her legs and go over to the door to listen for any sounds outside. There never were anymore.

It had been a long time now since there were any sounds at all. She often felt this place that was built to save lives was wasted on just one person. One life. Loneliness is a special kind of cancer that has a very real cure, or had before it all. So as treatment for this disease she would spend as much time as she could talking with her mother. She would tell her stories and more and more often break down as the isolation became too much to bear. Had it not been for the soft words and comfort she found in those talks she wondered how long she could have lasted. A prison without a warden and no locks is still a prison after all and this one had only one clear way out. When that thought crept in she would hold the locket even more tightly. Somehow that would always keep her there. If she held her heart she could find such hope in its beating. Here and now, as she shared her troubles and her stories, it was ok. She could endure most anything. So she was free from everything for at least that time.

Then the tape stopped. It would always stop at the same place and she knew but was always touched with sad surprise. Some days she was so lost she wouldn’t notice she was alone again. She stared at the frozen image on the screen feeling cheated. Sometimes for seconds sometimes for minutes. She got lost there more and more.

Her hands were now thin and blemished. The same hands still clutched that locket after so much time. Maybe she was slower now and had not listened for the sounds in many years. She didn’t need them anymore. That was no longer her hope. She found another way out of that prison every time she started the video. The monitor would flash and as she heard those first words she would hold the locket and feel her heart begin to beat again.