Fiction
Cathedral
Colleen Addison
issue three.
My friend’s hushed whisper in the chancel: I reach pointedly for my hearing aids. Can she not speak up? Let these walls take more, for I can see the buttresses through the stains of glass. She murmurs again, and I frown; the rasp of her voice is hard on my faulty ears, and I have to press the button onto the comfort setting. Of course it’s a church, but we can talk freely, can’t we? No one here but a Pietà, and that’s made of stone and a bit of twisted wire for the halo, a quiet mouth firmed still in sadness. On the side tray there are tiny grief candles flickering in their glass cases; all those sorrows and then the statue beside them. Out of the corner of my eye I see my friend’s mouth move again: what soft secrets might she be passing on? And then I hear. The tumour’s coming back, she says, my friend in the cathedral. My head is still turned away, and I wish it wasn’t; I wish I was facing her, hearing problems or no. Before me there are the candles, the Pietà, all those silent sorrows.
About the Author
Colleen Addison earned a PhD in health information; she then promptly got sick herself. She now lives, writes and heals on a small island off the coast of Vancouver, Canada. Her recent work has appeared in Little Free Lit Mag, River Teeth, and Halfway Down the Stairs, and she has been nominated for a Best of the Net award.
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