[ π ]γ
€.γ
€do they have a sound, like a song or voice, that they associate with peace ?
@sleuthscreams sent in an ask
there is a cassette tape hidden among deena's belongings. not jewelry. not photographs. not awards or childhood trophies. a small rectangle of plastic & unraveling memories. an artifact. a RELIC. proof that ghosts can live in places other than graveyards. her mother recorded it when deena was a baby. a fussy thing. all tears & stubborn lungs. there is white noise at the beginning. a sharp click. then laughter.
just one giggle. bright. warm. the kind that fills a room before a person ever enters it.
her mother thought the recording was silly. you can hear it in that laugh. hear the smile wrapped around the edges of it. then the lullaby begins. soft as snowfall. gentle as a hand brushing hair from a fevered forehead. a melody meant for sleepless nights & worried mothers.
deena has memorized every second. every breath. every crackle. every warble hidden in the aging tape. she knows exactly where her mother's voice catches on a note. knows where the cassette briefly struggles beneath the weight of time. she has listened to it so often that the imperfections have become sacred. little landmarks inside a country she can no longer visit.
when her father discovered it, he tried to destroy it. perhaps grief makes monsters of all of us. perhaps rage does. perhaps a man can only tolerate being haunted by a woman for so long before he reaches for the nearest weapon. the film inside snapped.
deena cried harder over that cassette than she did over some funerals.
she spent days repairing it.
years later she paid someone to restore it when age began eating through the tape like moths through silk. she still keeps it. still listens. during storms. during sleepless nights. when paint stains her fingertips. when loneliness settles inside her ribcage like wet cement.
there are days when the world becomes a place of missing girls & dead friends & fathers buried beneath too much dirt. days where grief crawls into her throat & nests there.
those are the days she reaches for the cassette. because for two minutes & seventeen seconds, her mother is alive. for two minutes & seventeen seconds, a woman who left when deena was still too young to understand abandonment is no longer a memory or a photograph or a wound.
she is a voice. she is laughter. she is warmth. she is HERE. & when the song ends, silence arrives like a funeral procession. slow. merciless. inevitable. but for those two minutes & seventeen seconds, deena barker remembers what peace sounds like.
it sounds like her mother laughing before she starts to sing.
