Clara pretends this is not the time and that she has not been lying awake this long. She thought that when she retired she would sleep later, but like everything else sleep seems to recede with age. The only thing she has more of is time. And the girl. When she wants to sleep she holds the girl and when she wakes the girl is the first thing she thinks of.
Now the Rilke flows …
It is enough that on a balcony
or in the frame of a window
a woman hesitates … to be
the one we lose
the moment she appears.
And if she lifts her arms
to tie her hair, tender vase:
how our loss gains
a sudden emphasis,
our sadness radiance.
Clara squeezes her fists and pushes her feet as far as they will go, legs stretched to the end of the bed, but she can’t dislodge the feeling she made a fool of herself in the library with her daft question about mulberries and orange recipes, then taking round that stupid key lime pie.