The Testament of Mary

Because the world is a place of silence, the sky at night when the birds have gone is a vast silent place. No words will make the slightest difference to the sky at night. They will not brighten it or make it less strange. And the day too has its own deep indifference to anything that is said.

But what is also strange, what seems strange after all these years, is that I had the capacity then to control myself, to weigh things up, to watch and do nothing and know that that was right. We held each other and stood back. That is what we did. We held each other and stood back as he howled out words that I could not catch

And what was strange about the power he exuded was that it made me love him and seek to protect him even more than I did when he had no power.

Most of them believed, or so I learned, that it should not even be attempted, that it would represent a mockery of the sky itself. They felt, as I felt, as I still feel, that no one should tamper with the fullness that is death. Death needs time and silence. The dead must be left alone with their new gift or their new freedom from affliction.

Maybe the memory of him as I enter my last days will retreat into my heart more profoundly and I will not need

The idea that time was moving, the idea that so much of the world remained mysterious, unsettled me.

came like something in my heart that pumped darkness through me at the same rate as it pumped blood.

Memory fills my body as much as blood and bones.