Red Leaves

PART III

You stop now. You take a sip of coffee. You are halfway through the story you intend to tell. You realize that you have reached the moment when the lines you thought ran parallel begin to intersect. You know that from hens on the telling will become more difficult. You will need to speak in measured tones, make the right connections. Nothing should blur, and nothing should be avoided. Particularly the responsibilities, the consequences.

You want to describe how the history of one family stained another, as if the colors from one photograph bled onto another in an accidental double exposure. You want to expose this process, but instead you stare out at the rain, watching people as they stand beneath their soaked umbrellas, and consider not what happened, but how it might have been avoided, what you could have done to stop it, or at least to change it in a way that would have allowed lives to go on, find balance, reach the high wisdom that only the fallen know.

But the wheels of your mind begin to spin. You can feel them spinning, but there is nothing to do but wait until they find traction. Then, without warning, they do, and you understand that all you can do is go on, start at exactly where you left off.