Memory

Somewhere long ago, curtains rippled in late afternoon breeze. Piano music from a nearby house. She lay in the grass, watching a ladybug balance on a blade. That was before the rain. She should have realized it was coming. The build-up of clouds on the horizon, the stickiness in the air, the restlessness of the wind. But she wasn’t paying attention, intent instead on the life of minutia. Only when thunder cracked the sky did she look up.

The music stopped. Her mother glanced out the kitchen window. Her father stood at the edge of the porch, left hand fingering something in his pocket, cigarette in his right. Neither of them noticed her.

Curtains billow in the wind, smell of rain on dust. Windowpanes reflect like puddles; images shimmering, shivering, distorted by time and loss of vision.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
~Edward de Bono

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

~T.S. Eliot