She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror. What her reflection showed was that her children were gone and she had to face their absence on her face, on each pore of her skin, on her stare…
Even taking a shower was painful. Lathering her body would touch a proof of life years, each inch witnessing a transformation into womanhood that her daughter would never experience.
The labor of breathing filling her lungs with air that would never be smelled by her son.
She should remain silenced, because no sound or song or story would vibrate in her daughter’s ears. No use she had for any hearing now that their voices were silenced.
Alone, immobile, each second of her remaining life representing seconds of an age that her children would never live. She felt that staying alive was usurping a time that had been robbed from them.
