JACKDidn’t they all tell me that this would come with time? Healing. Things getting lighter. Things meaning less. I thought it was just something people were saying to fill silences. But it appears that they were right. The trouble is running off me. I am moving on. Such quare liberation.
While the others sleep, I step out of the house to take in the last of Kilmarra. Knowing without really understanding that in the morning we will leave the place we come from and
never come back again. Big bloodied sky, yellow clouds hanging in the thick air. The bare winter trees reach up to be touched by lightning. I do the same. I wait for the weather to break over me. For the rumble of thunder. For God to make Himself known to me. But when the sky opens, no god or heaven is there. Only miles of navy dark.
And I realise that over the last year, I’ve been so focused on the darkness of my skies that I’ve let the rest of the world pass me by. I wonder have the others noticed this? I wonder have they seen the gloomy fire that cuts up my horizon, and know how gladly I have let it blaze?
I go back inside to start loading up the cart. To wake the rest of them. Leaving the house for the last time, my mind turns away from you, and to the whole year that has passed. A year of things left unsaid, unacknowledged. As though their happening didn’t ruin me.
Copyright © 2026 by Chloe Michelle Howarth. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
