echo

 

I heard a woman crying in the middle of the night. Her rhythmic sobs broke the silence, undulating like waves of time… I stopped breathing and listened. She kept on crying, softly, steadily, endlessly… her pain like a shadow on my soul. Like a reply. Like an echo. I lay in my bed and listened as she cried somewhere in the darkness, beyond my sight and touch. Close by, close enough to feel, her tears cascading from my ceiling. Minutes ticked by, the night breathed in and out, and I still heard her cry. On and on, as the night slipped away and the morn hovered behind my eyelids. And then the darkness ebbed, dissipated, and I opened my eyes to a murky light of dawn, lifting my head from a pillow saturated with tears…