The second voice: “I’m the same, really, and it plays havoc with my stomach. I can’t even face dry toast first thing, but I try to force it down as I hear it’s good for nervous acid.”
The first speaker was hidden by the shaft of sunshine – like a heavenly girder sloping through the window – as she (evidently a ‘she’ from the voice) now made a point of ceasing her belly-aching from the armchair:
“But it’s so much nicer with the sun out, and there are so many even worse troubles at sea. Other people have to put up with things far more serious than my own worries, I always tell myself.”
The second speaker was equally unseen because I seemed to be looking through his eyes (evidently male not only judging by the voice but also from my view of the trousers on his legs which were just above my lowest sight-line). He spoke with a slight slur. A bit early in the morning for that, I thought, as the sun was surely not yet over the metaphorical yard-arm.
“It doesn’t help me,“ he said, “when i think of other people’s troubles. They cannot have any effect logically on how I feel about my own troubles. Millions are currently dying at this very minute in the world, some naturally, some violently, some peacefully, others in pain. What possible bearing can those unknown deaths have on me. Anyway, I agree that a nice day helps...”
I looked along with him towards the breaking dawn, as the single sun-shaft twirled around swirling dust-motes and around the now real, if impressionistic, face of the woman in the armchair, as she spoke again:
“Pain can be shared, pain should be shared.”
And the face’s impression became even less defined by the light-filled raindrops from its eyes. Sadness without gravity.
And the dawn had finally broken. Broken within or from my own eyes, too.
My faltering voice had already broken. Broken for good. Dry as unspreaded toast.
