because survival is insufficient

My mother told me all about the old world, before the flood. She said it had been of a different kind: sinking. She would braid my hair and recount harrowing tales, stories of my father and of demons from the underworlds. She said all is forgiven but nothing forgotten. Then the darkness in her eyes was stronger than the light. And her words flowed like waves. She said all was well now the way it was. That all occupied its own space, in the past as in the here and now. When she spoke like this, something would come over her. She would pull hard on my braids, as if to punish me for something that dwelled in a place deep within her. Something that tugged at her from the center, like a hunger that could not be satisfied. She spoke of yesterday as though it were before her very eyes. As if today was but a veil that shrouded in shadow all that was real to her. The old world came to haunt her like a ghost that whispered to her in a dream, how to erect the new world, stone by stone. From then on, I knew that nothing changes. That all things remain as before. The spinning wheel turns, round and round in a circle. One fate tied to the next. A thread, red like blood, that cleaves together all our deeds. One cannot unravel the knots. But they can be severed. He severed ours, with the sharpest blade. Yet something remains behind that cannot be severed. An invisible bond. On many a night, he tugs at it. And then I wake with a start, knowing that nothing ceases to be. That all remains.