The scenes from today's edits (oct 25) (Patreon)

1.

A weight will lift, a leaf will fall.

People think a branch is broken or not broken. On or off, like binary. People like binaries. They like to think the world is logical. But if the tree is healthy and strong, the branch might only halfway break. Some bit of living wood holding on, so that a body strangles and swings, wild and alive, instead of slowly twisting with an efficiently broken neck.

Our mother was too careful and precise for that. Sunday says she was like a mechanic who could tell what was wrong with a car just by listening to the sounds the engine makes. She could fix things, when they went wrong. My father's death half snapped the branch inside our mother, and my sister Sunday and I were the living wood holding the rope, keeping her alive, and strangling her ever since.

Our mother had been in pain for too long. So she came up with a plan. Two cinder blocks from a neighbour's garden, and a chain around her waist. A quiet pier on the north shore, and a note so that she didn't simply vanish into the Atlantic.

She pushed the chained cinderblocks off the side of the pier, and she fell.

2.

At night, there's nobody to watch the different ways we are sad. We sneak out of the house while our grandmother sleeps. While our uncles sleep. Then down the long gravel lane.

Sometimes we hold hands, or walk single file. Sometimes we hear a car coming long before we see the lights, and we find a tree on the side of the road and stand beside it. Not behind. Not crouched. Just close enough that the greys of our clothes look like cold bark. We don't move, and it makes us invisible.

After the car passes, Sunday holds my hand. The sky is empty and full at the same time. Stars so small it feels impossible that we can see them clearly. It makes the road darker.

The warehouse beside the pier doesn’t have a sign out front. It doesn’t have any windows. It just has a big sliding door. Lobster traps are everywhere, set back from the water, stacked on dry land. Sunday climbs up on top of a trap, then onto a higher stack. They’re held together with green rope. I climb up beside her, and we sit looking out at the pier. After a while, I look up at the sky instead.

Soon we will climb down and walk out onto the pier, where nobody is watching.

We will hold hands, and we will look over the edge again.