Quiet

Simone is on my lap, her paws curled around my knee, purring. For just a second, this is all there is.

My brother has emailed me four times this week. He is, by turns, lucid and then impossibly strange. Sometimes, he apologizes for what he has written and asks me to please write back.

I want to comfort him, but I can’t think of what to say. I don’t know how to smooth the edges of what he is feeling. I can’t understand what he is feeling.

I’m usually good with words; they come easily to me. Too easily, often. I am forever thinking out loud, as though I have to hear what things sound like before I know what they are.

There are times, though, when words fail me. Then, all I have is a body with dumb hands and arms.

I can’t touch my brother. He’s too far away.

Simone looks up at me and grazes my chin with her paw. Her eyes are as pale as water.