‘You are blessed. You are blessed. You are blessed. You are blessed. They’ve given you love, all the love you’ll ever need. You are blessed.’

The woman had been crying and repeating herself for hours now. No one was staring at her any more, though a few dull eyes still fell in her direction. There was nothing there though, just eyes hanging in sallow faces. They’d had their vision drained on the journey they had taken and been blinded by their arrival.

“… they’ve given you love, all the love you’ll ever need. You are blessed.’

I hug my baby closer and try to filter out the unceasing chant. Perhaps I am. I’m the only one left living here. The rest have stepped over already but I have something to fix me in place, love, all the love I’ll ever need. Her words are meaningless, a desperate lie but my eyes aren’t lost yet. I still see. I see enough to know that they took him and he won’t be back, enough to have watched that old love cut apart and buried. I saw them slice at him, through cracks in flimsy wood. He was made nothing, another object to be dragged away, no longer lover, father or man. And I was given a replacement, all the love you’ll ever need wrapped in rags torn from the blind who bore broken witness to the birth.

I feel no blessing though, no love, no nothing. I am no better than the rest. But still, I am not yet blinded. All the love you’ll ever need. Enough to see, for now.

“… you are blessed.”

—

No Cure for Shell Shock, the collection this is from, is available free on Kindle until the 14th of January. You don’t need a Kindle reader to download it, the app can be installed on any phone or tablet. You can download the book here.