If only the candles were real.
The quilt lies unfinished. Every week for the past year she has sewed a completed patch onto it. Every day she has sat by the fire, her tired eyes straining as her scarred fingers stitch the patterns. Some of them are accidental scars, where the pot burned her fingers or the sewing needle slipped and grazed her skin. Some are on-purpose scars when she burned or cut to numb the emotional pain. It helped her focus on the work, and the physical pain, and not have to think anymore.
Sometimes she listens to the radio while she works. Never the news, only the music. But the music, too, can be painful. When a Bob Dylan song comes on she turns off the radio with fumbling fingers. How she hates that son-of-a-bitch.
Tonight is his birthday. Tonight twenty years ago a small bluish child was born on the white hospital bed in Boston. And that night her blood stained the sheets and her cries of pain reverberated through the quiet hospital. No husband to hold her hand, only the doctors gathered round to deliver the child, cut the cord. Her blood staining the crisp white in blotches and swirls as ink stains a piece of paper when the bottle is knocked over.
Tonight his quilt patch takes keeps her up late. She is embroidering a birthday cake with orange and yellow candles and chocolate frosting. Chocolate was his favorite.
She considers baking a real cake and icing it with swirls and stars and writing Happy 20 Jack and cutting off a slice and pretending he is here while the good smells swirl through the house. Then she would bring it over to the neighbors. Eventually, she decides against it. That would hurt too much.
If only the candles were real.
