Novella (iii/?)

208

As he opens the door, I catch a glimpse of the little boy who used to wait on the threshold, looking down the path to Asmara. In that doorway, he is a silhouette that stays young forever.
“You were whimpering.”
“I was sleeping”, Tekle half-answers.
“You were doing both then. Let me in.”
The first few times we stood here like this, I could feel as he scanned my face - the only one I can offer him - looking through it for another that was once made up of all the same lines. Then there’d be a gap in time that felt like a journey as he calibrated to who else is no longer here. I’ve started wearing the school basketball vest every day. He doesn’t have to look at my face, just the number on my chest; a harsh enough memory in itself, but it lets us move through the lurch together, anchored to something. Tekle stays in the doorway. The unspoken gap is shrinking, but his eyes are more muddled than any day yet. They creep with a waking sleep, something foreign clouding the lurch until his ey…