HOMEsick.

I’m starting to get in trouble again..
I do not manage my 24 allotted hours well, they say.
My boldest, or my most unthinking, flare up?
I was visiting the memory of an empty, snow covered town when one of them oozed out of the snow.
She seeped up.
in heavy, draping ruby.
unhurriedly made her way towards the abandoned café terrace I loitered..
I did not offer peripheral awareness.

But an odd thing, as she arrived at the gate her crimson cloak became a small snow vest and she converted to a woman. A normal woman.

And she opened the gate. And she stood facing me, studying my bottomless gaze into the vacant street.
She took a moment to turn her face towards my interest, and again my face.
then sat down..
We, there, almost as friends.
Almost as if she knew. I took a packet of sprinkles and tore it into the hot, sweet beverage I knew I could not finish.
And in silence she explained that she carried understanding for the things I must have bore inside about here.
And in sounds like heavy sheets of glass collapsing she said,
“you cannot stay here.”
“I know.”
“Not other days.
Not times after now.
Not in seconds or years.
You cannot come here..”
And as each word reached me, I could feel the first time my mother had dropped me off at daycare, and how the recognition of truth arrived at me identically.
And she conceded me moments, and we waited for the memory to perform and parade its’ climax in notable detail.
[The little red-headed girl exploded out of the heavy metal door
and she fell into the street.
She made a laughing sound and smiled at me.]
My secret, my desperate denial. I would not tell.
The woman took me by the hand and blinked slowly,
“ you need to keep your eyes open so he can remove the tubes.”