"I'm not as good as you think I am."
     
     Your voice had been flat and quiet--almost a murmur as you spoke from that old wood desk chair. I was never any good at reading you and even now I can't figure out if this was intended to be defeatist or a deterrent.
     You hated me in that moment; hated what I had said, what I had been doing and why I was doing it. The hate had been born of fear, confusion and frustration as you thought about how you had done everything--EVERYTHING--that you knew was right, everything that you knew how to or could do and still you were being told that it was not enough. The person that you had given everything to craved more from you than you had to give and how could you get them more and from where and it was just so--frustrating. Akin to being punched in the stomach and not being able to take in enough air. An obsessive thought. Something that won't. just. go. away. Inside of it--of you-- is action from impulse. Anything to shake the thought.
     You refused to look at me.
     Despite your unhappiness, you pleaded to retract any words that had been spoken. You did this in spite of your self-inflicted lack of goodness.
     But I thought of you in clear images like fine photographs. Stills of you asleep, the creases in your forehead washed of brooding, younger somehow (or perhaps your age for once), with warm roses smoothed in cream cheeks and slightly parted lips. All of the look of a saint-- an oil painting on a Catholic prayer card.