Early in the morning they were there together. Her hair and clothes disheveled and He stood there; like a mountain. The sky was blue. The clouds were white but there was orange and pinks and grays and deep blues in them as well as it was sunrise.  

“I don’t want to give up my son!” She was clearly upset.

“Who said that you have to?” “He was calm.

“You did!”

“We are supposed to do that right?”

“Not in the way you are thinking.”

“He is my only son.”

“Yes.” She is putting out a cigarette on the ground and as she turns to look at him she is crying.

“It’s like Hannah you know, she wanted a child so bad and she asked and she made a promise that she’d give the child back to you if…and she did and I don’t want to loose my son!” 

A large hand in front of her face now, the index finger and the thumb meet and SNAP! It was so loud that there was a burst of air like wind in her face.

“Snap out of it.”

“That is not what I am asking of you.” 

“What are you asking of me?”

“Every parent looses their child to adulthood; it is how it should be…they grow up over the years, it feels slow but then one day they are not children anymore, it is not slow at all.” He sighs.
“I am asking you to trust him to me, the task and the details, everyday, over and over again until one day he is a man and responsible for himself and then you can let go and let him be the man that he can be.”“Okay, I think I will need help…will you help me to do that, everyday, I mean?”

“Yes.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”

She feels silly and as she is about to tell Him this he says, “You’re not, I have a question, before we get back.”

“Yes.”

“Where is your heart?”

“What?”

She starts to be sarcastic with him and lifts her finger to her chest but then she sees his face and his eyes and that he is serious so she stops herself,

“I don’t know.”

He lifts his hand because he thought the finger pointing to the chest was a funny thought to have and acts as if he were going to snap again and their eyes meet and they both smile.

“Ok, my heart?” She is thinking…

“Oh,” Then she looks back over her shoulders and lifts her chin to point his eyes there, “It is back there…”

“Why?”

She is embarrassed.

“Because back there, back then is when I was…”

Her head is down and with a deep sigh of regret and a bit of shame she says, “There is where I was esteemed so highly, I can’t think of another way to say it, it sounds dumb but…”

“Why is your heart there now?”

“I suppose that I liked it.”

“Do you mean, as a worker?”

“No, that is the shameful bit; back then is where I was just… you know esteemed so highly.”
She says these last words with a strange twang.

“I don’t think I realized that until just now though.”

“Yes.”
 
The thing behind her is like something woven and it hangs in the air above her, just out of reach. It is like a movie playing in fast forward, all her days lived in that place and time but the images are not projected there but are coming from the thing as it waves in the air like an eel in the water. 

Then with one step forward she takes His hand in hers. She kneels, closes her eyes and brings the back of his thumb to her lips and chin and forehead and kisses it. With this the woven thing begins to unravel. It breaks apart into a million tiny pieces as it falls and when it hits the ground it bounces and it is now dust but hitting the ground again it is liquid and then as the sun would dry a raindrop it is nothing, it is gone.  

“Ok.” They both say without words and she stands to walk away.

“Let’s we go.”