January Pearson

 
Loneliness

A trail of footprints in the snow where someone used to be. Also, silence. Not a quiet path through golden aspens. The memory of sound: someone singing in the shower, the razor buzzing. This quiet is heavy as an iceberg dispersing ocean. But loneliness is not solitude. The moon is not lonely though it is pinned to darkness. Darkness, however, is a kind of loneliness because all the light has fallen out. When a spouse goes away, there are shelves without sneakers, empty sock drawers, an undisturbed pillow. The shape of not home fills every room, even the sunny breakfast nook.

Seven

Seven meant complete to the ancients, which also means plenty. Seven loaves and a few fish fed thousands on a grassy hill one afternoon. The basket of our brain can hold seven bits of new information. Seven continents stay afloat on the grey-blue ocean. It's also true that plenty means enough: his illness lasted seven years. Or my mother gave him seven + seven medications morning and night. He learned to walk, then fell, and learned to walk again for those years of hospital beds and needle pricks and surgeries. All this went on until he turned seventy. His mother believed illness was a sin. She counted seven deadly ones. Someone else said we should forgive seventy times seven, which is the same as two mirrors reflecting into infinity. In some respects, having enough means your belly is full. In another, it’s how much rain one shoe can hold.