Not Your Time

Terse. Journal/March 2023

The light must be busted, I thought. My hands reached out into the deep emptiness, floor boards creaking with reluctant steps. Murmuring voices of my elderly parents and ticking clocks echoed from downstairs. The soft-footed soldiers of memory marched through my mind: my childhood bedroom, packing clothing and coffee pots for college, returning at age 40, between marriages, my infant son, now a boisterous eight year old, sleeping on the bed. I only came up here to return a folding table to its place, lean it against a wall, and go back downstairs. Just that. I’d never been afraid here before. That night, the darkness frightened me.