There is a stump in this lawn that, peering down next to in the dark, so strongly resembles her. The jagged edge ringed and slanted creates the contour of her face. The bark, her once soft, silken skin now cracked and wrinkled with age and regret. The moss and grass nestled up against the edges of where the stump plunges into the earth her speech bubbles, soft, inaudible, sometimes too caring and ignorant for her own good.
A cat jumps out and perches upon the stump. The image is immediately erased and I am shaken back to a reality where I cannot run. Cannot move. Feet cemented to the curb in quick drying guilt. I see her face for only a split second as it runs past me and only as I turn to see her soft heels kick up after her does it register what I have just seen. Who she is. Stunned, almost shamed into recognition that I was wrong. And continue to be. Wrong.
There was once a time when not everything seemed to be traced back to one event. Was once a time when each moment hung suspended in the air as a unique bubble waiting to be burst. Now, all lines are drawn back to one moment. This bird, that moment. These leaves, that moment. This thought, that moment. All is undone.