Untitled - Vivian Maier

IT’S BEEN ALMOST A YEAR

It’s been almost a year, and at ten years old, Charlene has stepped in as the caretaker. She bursts with survival instincts, but underneath, I know she aches, perhaps more than I. How many years will the grief eat at our weak souls? Will we have relief by the time Charlene is thirty? Will we survive long enough?

Eric worries me. He’s only eight and he walks around dumbstruck. He’s helpful, and he carries my things, but he acts as if he just returned from the war zone in Afghanistan. I want to believe he is moving toward being able to live as a human. After all, he is not the most devastated casualty.

Timmy is only four. His disposition makes my anger rage at the dead woman and creates startling fears of the future, of his future. He constantly looks up, thinking that he might be able to see the moment when his mother incarnated wickedly as a psychotic ape and smashed the glass,  jumping out of the ninth story window. I wonder if he thinks he might go back, 11 months in time, and he might save her by catching her with his tiny hands. I know he cannot process the permanent structures of a suicide. I can’t process those things either, but I know not to look up for her.

It’s been almost a year. It seems we won’t ever recover because time takes far too much time.

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Sunday Picture Press III

Indigo Spider has a picture prompt challenge called “Sunday Picture Press.” I’m not good at these, but the above picture haunted me, so I wrote a VERY SHORT story. Enjoy others at the prompt post. I am sure they saw the photo far differently!