Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller

way my life turned out.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Elena’s voice yanks me from my introspection, and I jolt up,
straightening my spine as she enters the office. She makes her way over to
me, taking a seat on my lap before I’ve even managed to ask her to.
Like she knows it’s where she belongs.
She looks at the photo, then back at me, as if waiting to see if I’ll
continue.
“My mother,” I offer, smiling softly. “She passed when I was thirteen.”
One arm slides up around my neck, slipping around my shoulders, and
Elena presses her head into mine. “Cancer?”
“Invasive lobular carcinoma,” I say with a slight nod. Pain lances through
my heart at the term, sawing the organ in half. “When she was first
diagnosed, they just called it an abnormal growth in her left breast. I don’t
think they wanted to acknowledge it was that particular form of cancer,
because she was so young.”
Like being struck by lightning, a sudden, sharp pang splits my chest,
shocking me to the core.
Thirty-two. My mother was thirty-two when she died.
The realization that soon I’ll have been on this planet longer than her cuts
deep, prodding at a scabbed wound I once believed was healed. Yet, the way
it throbs and chips away, drawing new, fresh blood, suggests otherwise.
“She’s beautiful,” Elena says quietly, pulling me gently from the
downward spiral of my thoughts, without even necessarily meaning to. She
stares at the picture with a soft look on her face, unaware of the existential
crisis brewing in the back of my mind, content that I’m once again sharing
one of the secret facets of my life.
If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t dare. Would never have even brought
them back to my house to live, much less started spilling my guts.
I’m not usually a gambler. Don’t like leaving my life in the hands of fate.
But something about this woman makes me want to risk everything.
“She’s the reason I got into poetry as a kid. She was always reading
Shakespeare and would quote Chaucer like scripture. She would’ve loved
you.”
I push some hair from her pale shoulder, leaving my next thought
unspoken, hidden in the depths of my soul where it belongs. Would she have
loved me?