Holding My Breath [Wattys 2016]

3 2 ~ A a r o n

                 

Present Day ~ November 25, 2010

I blink.

I blink again.

But it's still blurry. It isn't until my shirt sleeve wipes the water from my eyes do I see the house clearly. Everything looks the same. The fading white boards that stand together, the green lawn that invites the snow we all know will come soon. It looks so normal. It's the same as it was two days ago.

But two days ago, Mom was still here. They moved her because she was getting too... too sick.

Instead of walking in, I sit down on the lawn, just looking at the home that smiles back at me. It shouldn't look this way. The lawn should be dying and the paint should be chipping. All of those boards that stand together? It doesn't make sense that they are still in the same place. We're not together now.

Mom is an hour away at the nearest hospital. How is that better than letting her drift away peacefully at home? Where she is comfortable and we can be there at a second's notice.

Dad... I don't ever know where he is, not anymore. Maybe at the hospital. Maybe locked in his study.

And me? I'm sitting on the lawn, staring at the house that didn't even pause for a moment when she left. Something should change. Something to acknowledge that there was something lost. We all know... We all know she isn't going to come back home.

I press my fists into my eyes.

I put my head between my knees.

I pull at my hair.

But when I look up, it's still there. Like nothing's happened.