The Stillness

"He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they're hungry." --Colum McCann

If Maura is lucky, she could, within the next six months, be off to the North, to finally embark on the journey she has needed for some time now. If there was a train that left tonight, she might board it. And yet, the image of this room comes back to her. In this room, there were ordinary things, daily things, daily pressures and sadnesses and hurts. And a tree, encasing them from the rain, snow, sun, letting their stillness last. Sitting at the top of the city now, hearing her own breathing, loud and sharp, Maura wants the ordinary, is entrenched in the ordinary and yet isn't seeing it.

Mary Black says she doesn't want to fall in love again, he's living in a glass jar. Maura is wondering what it would be like to look from inside a glass jar.