Cold day...

 

It was cold when I woke up. I was sleepy, out of sorts with the world, not sure of today or tomorrow and even yesterday seemed somehow out of focus. It was like the way you sometimes see a distorted reflection in a rain drenched side mirror or catch a slight movement out of the corner of your eye when you absolutely know that there is nothing there, an unoccupied space which was occupied up until you noticed it empty.

I didn’t know anything was wrong, well no more than usual. How could I? I’d been asleep and dreaming and still wasn’t quite awake. I was cold though, cold and unsettled on another Monday morning and just about to get on with another day. Only today wasn’t another day. It was the day. The one that I always knew would come, but believed never would and suddenly everything was wrong and couldn’t be quite right ever again.

The news travelled from upstairs in a slow rush brought quietly on the voice of a messenger girl who couldn’t understand the meaning of her declaration. She told me the news. I heard it but I couldn’t hear it. My ears vibrated with the words but my brain could make no sense of them. What? What? What? I looked at the floor. What? Who is this to be telling me this? What? And then my mind opened to the meaning and my soul, such as it is, trembled and wavered and the tears began to trickle as my anger turned to sorrow and back to anger again. What? And out of the corner of my eye a flash of blue and yellow and then that space was unoccupied and empty again as the old man shivered knowing that the stars would look very different tonight.