Portraits

Portraits

2 mins
376


The pain always starts with her toes, it always ends at the pith of her head. Julia wakes up mournfully every morning to a pain she can never explain. The doctors she has gone to see have told her it was something she would have to live with the rest of her life and that medicating it was the relief she may only have.

Easy for them to say when they aren't the ones feeling it.

Everyday, it's a trial between staying in bed wishing for it all to end and enduring getting out of bed to truly feel a pain free moment. She first wiggles her toes, then slowly bend her knees and breathes in. As the wave of sweat and ache disperse, she proceeds her ascend to her shoulder and finally lifts herself up.

She slips her feet away from the cold floor and into her slippers, she braces herself and rises off the bed.

Routine. That's it old girl. Routine.

Julia takes up the cross from her alter and a candle inside a pot filled with hardened remains of past candles. She whispers small prayers as she makes her way to the kitchen, boils a kettle of water, cooks a platter of fish, a meat and soup dish, and finally settles for her second breakfast of bread dipped in water.

It's nine o'clock when she finishes her routine. She takes tentative steps through the door with her long handled umbrella of cerulean blue and slowly, achingly, makes her way outside for some sun and a bit of...gossip.

By noon, Julia has the tele on to a variety show with a particularly loud comedian that she finds slightly irritating with a mirthful smile. Two hours more and she feels that moment, that moment where the pain recedes and becomes nothing but a distant memory.

"Hi, gran. How you feeling?"

A portrait of herself wearing a colorful t-shirt and pyjamas comes trotting in, stifling a yawn, and kisses her worn cheek.

"Doing better, Mai. Come, let's eat."

With a sleepy content smile, Mai joins her grandmother and debates the jokes blasting from the tele.


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