Little sparrow, little sparrow

April 28th, 2008

He has forgotten the convent walls, the iron gate and its thousand barbs, the doors whose hinges screamed as they opened and closed. But he remembers the garden; stepping into that confused mass of greenery hidden behind crumbling stone and rotting wood, his feet sinking into grass and makahiya, yet another child despoiling a secret world.

He remembers sunlight. Most probably he is wrong: it was August then, that first Monday morning, and the skies would have been overcast, cloudy gray. Yet his mind, thinking back, is filled with gold sunshine on white flowers and green leaves, with twitters of birdsong bubbling up amidst silence, with the stone bench warm beneath his touch, with the sudden, unexpected beauty of her face.

He must have stopped and bowed to her, but he cannot remember it. Nor can he recall much, after that overwhelming lightness.

“Who are you?” she had asked, and he, stumbling over his words, trying to breathe past the tightness in his chest, had answered. Years later he will still be wondering what he could have said.

He remembers her smile.

Even then Basilio did not believe in God. But Mary…!

Entry Filed under: writing