The kitchen is stoic, but there are
remnants everywhere. There is a pot on the stove, the food in it cold and
forgotten but untouched. The digital clock is flashing midnight, or noon,
because no one had the time to change it. The room is silent, the blinds are
drawn. One of the dining room chairs is toppled over from where a purse was
snatched, but even it looks devoid of motion. The house itself is stale, for it
is no longer a home and never will be through the eyes of a mother. All of the
doors are unlocked, and the garage door is open; there was no time to think of
that before the patrons left, besides, there’s nothing left to take. Everything
that was important has been stolen, snuffed out, unreturnable before there was
anyone to plead to. Sorrow is thick in the air though no one is here. It’s as
if the walls themselves are bending with the weight of what they know,
threatening to catch and buckle inward.
Up the stairs there is a blanket that
has fallen, blue and soft, drooping across the steps it wishes it could descend.
It is cold; untouched for what seems like a decade now, though it has only been
a few hours. The first room to the right is the master bedroom and the double
doors are half open, crooked and amiss from the way they were thrown open. There
is a shirt and tie laid out for the workday but forgotten. The queen sized bed
is made but it will be years before it is used for anything other than
sleeping. Tragedy has seeped in through the mattress and the memory of what was
conceived in it will sever any opportunity to start again. Not now, it’s too
soon. It will always be too soon in the eyes of a mother. Time is frozen here
it seems, suspended and caught like a breath inward as it always is when one
wants to forget. Everything is a reminder of what the mind desperately craves
to look over.
The hallway is short, but long enough to
create doubt in a parent’s mind. Perhaps they couldn’t hear the screaming. Perhaps
the baby monitor wasn’t enough. They blame themselves, who else is there? Deep
in their hearts, though, they know it was silent; being awake at exactly the
right moment wouldn’t have changed a single heartbeat. The room at the other
end is painted a soft blue, but now it looks like a muddy gray. There are
stuffed animals lined on the shelf but their eyes are glazed over and unhappy, never
again will chubby fingers run through their soft fur. Only a few months had
passed by since their anticipated owner’s arrival, only a few precious moments
out of the womb. Soon the door will be closed for what seems an eternity, the
room forgotten while the rest of the house heals. But for now, there is the
crib in the corner that seems violently alive though its sleeper is not.
Her screams are still caught in the
walls from when she bent over to pick up her darling boy.
