[ It feels like they're sifting through the ashes of a pyre looking for jewels that might have survived the heat; like they rob their own graves. Like they do this again and again, brought back by some dark compulsion, some creature that starves and hunts the same barren ground, ignoring the lands in sight where things grow.
It is a life they didn't live, a life that didn't happen, there is nothing there but shards of bone to keen over. It makes the skin of her shoulders crawl like he walks her into a corner and wants to keep her there until she gives him something he wants, even if she doesn't know what it is. Like every time she speaks of it she does the same to him. ]
Perhaps if you had asked, papa would have taken you. For all you were disinherited you were gently born, and my papa kind; he might have heard a story about a cruel and vengeful father and believed it unjust punishment. He knew what I had been made, wished to see me loved more than he wished me married well. I am a fifth daughter, more free to make such choices, and my family wealthy without my needing to buy it with my hand.
Perhaps then when I knew I loved you I could have loved you as a husband without the fear that rent us. Or perhaps you would have found yourself tied to a creature crazed with terror, convinced you played a game. Convinced you took her for land, or wealth, or status, that every moment you were absent you laughed at her in secret with some other lover. That she was nothing to you. Less than nothing. A wife who could not hear a single word you said in love, could not be touched without flinching, who wept wretched and broken and feared you. Perhaps Emile, who was making me her weapon, would have made sure the latter came to pass.
Perhaps we would have loved and had a home. A life. A family. Perhaps you would have come to hate me.
[ She is reaching for his hand again, eyes glittering with tears in the candlelight. ]
But what is there in any of this that could be of the slightest use to us now? None of that happened, and we cannot write over what did. I am here now, I love you now. Can we not simply love each other now? I do not want to make new fractured moments to regret.
no subject
It is a life they didn't live, a life that didn't happen, there is nothing there but shards of bone to keen over. It makes the skin of her shoulders crawl like he walks her into a corner and wants to keep her there until she gives him something he wants, even if she doesn't know what it is. Like every time she speaks of it she does the same to him. ]
Perhaps if you had asked, papa would have taken you. For all you were disinherited you were gently born, and my papa kind; he might have heard a story about a cruel and vengeful father and believed it unjust punishment. He knew what I had been made, wished to see me loved more than he wished me married well. I am a fifth daughter, more free to make such choices, and my family wealthy without my needing to buy it with my hand.
Perhaps then when I knew I loved you I could have loved you as a husband without the fear that rent us. Or perhaps you would have found yourself tied to a creature crazed with terror, convinced you played a game. Convinced you took her for land, or wealth, or status, that every moment you were absent you laughed at her in secret with some other lover. That she was nothing to you. Less than nothing. A wife who could not hear a single word you said in love, could not be touched without flinching, who wept wretched and broken and feared you. Perhaps Emile, who was making me her weapon, would have made sure the latter came to pass.
Perhaps we would have loved and had a home. A life. A family. Perhaps you would have come to hate me.
[ She is reaching for his hand again, eyes glittering with tears in the candlelight. ]
But what is there in any of this that could be of the slightest use to us now? None of that happened, and we cannot write over what did. I am here now, I love you now. Can we not simply love each other now? I do not want to make new fractured moments to regret.