Eleemosynary - Lee Blessing
ECHO
So I started wondering if they weren’t right. Maybe the smartest thing would be to forget you completely. What were you ever to me, except a voice on the phone now and then? And I looked around the new room where I was staying, and it was real nice and... blank, the way a thing is before you put any time into it. I thought, I could live a whole new life here. I could invent a whole new me. I could be Barbara if I wanted to, not Echo. I could fit in. I could become like Robinson Crusoe, and adapt myself to a strange and harsh environment. I could live in a kind of desert. I could even flourish. Like you have. I could live without the one thing I wanted. But I kept hearing your voice. That voice on the other end of the phone, hiding behind spelling words, making excuses – or so energetic sometimes, so... wishing. I don’t even remember what you said, just the sound of it. Just the sound of, “I love you, and I failed you.” I hate that sound. And I will never settle for it, because no one failed me. No one ever failed me. Not Grandma and not you.
