Autumns & Silence

The lamps were lazy in nana’s bungalow, and the nights seemed to yawn their way across the darkness. Will gave himself permission to remember, to walk his mind to the chair next to the bookshelf, by the window. Maybe it was because he had been younger then, still dipping his toes in the river of time, before he could swim, before he could drown.

The afternoons had felt like whole summers. A single school day could make you go mad. For just a moment, he felt the dread that had filled him when his parents first explained it would be a whole year before his next birthday. A year meant something then. It was heavy, slowly carved out of the hardwood of mornings and plans, autumns and silence.

“They don’t make time the way they used to,” he thought to himself. “Now it feels cheap and disposable, like a meal you eat in your car.”