Lera Lynn - My Least Favorite Life (From The... by esahulat60956

And now that the time has come, I mean that time has gone, and the green has slipped from your heart, you stand by the window, quiet and amazed, trying to remember-you're not sure what. Some sense of the other life that lived under the skin, some dim memory of a former age, now long gone, when time held together so many things and childhood hours, heavy and clumpish, dragged on forever like a thick wheel-less suitcase.

On the corner of the street, the big sloping house with the secret, cloistered garden that no-one standing on the outside would imagine was real. Patrick-or Partick, as we called him, Patrick being too posh a name for someone from the dark country- once invited us to play football on his lawns. If the grass was finely cut we would call the patch 'Wembley'. And as we were served chilled lemonade in tall glasses, we wondered who this kid, older than us, really was. No-one had seen him ever go to school or even play on the streets. Where have all these people gone now...

~

And now your life, still small, lived out in diminished horizons, which is to say, not knowing how to say, inwardly. 

The summer sun blazes away high up and we move to a different pace today. KP asks, "is this September or have I forgotten something?" What light can do is take us back, even if only for a moment, even if not really. In this other life I take a step to the right, and not to the left, that is all it takes sometimes. Then I am not me, and you are not you.

~

Phone calls in the morning: life insurance, credit cards, all for things I do not need. 

Mrs S has done her best for the last twenty years to sell me some insurance. "Now will you consider it?" Like death courting me. Eventually fobbed her off by telling her my wife was against it. Could almost hear her say, in muffled tones, "that girl never was no good." Next time must come up with a better excuse, something like, insurance is against Islam. That will end the conversation. What conversations must be ended, and which taken up again, for life to go on?

{photo courtesy of Roxana}