Birthday

Today, it's your birthday. And I'm thinking of you. Or rather the absence of you; the hole that, until recently, had gone unnoticed. It doesn't hit hard or even often and when it does I am struck with confusion rather than a dull hurt and bruise. But I don't ask why, I don't seek never-coming answers. My eyes don't cloud and showers do not pour from them. I do not miss you.

But still, it aches. A small ache, barely bigger than a five pence piece. Barely noticeable after it has landed, spun, toppled and found a place to rest. I can barely feel it if I don't go looking. But it's there.

You're not gone but you're not here either. You swing between - an indecisive child with an unknowingly cruel mind, picking on ants and next keeping them as pets, oblivious to the damage caused unless someone tells you. But they won't. I am the ant to your magnifying glass, to your ant farm filled with sand.

There's guilt there, between the cracks and tunnels, like the ant that got away. Being wrong, in the wrong. It's not your fault, they'd say as they cling to what little they know. But then the question would come. Then whose? Silence or hapless blame. An answer crafted with lies to cover up what isn't known. And I'd be back there, wondering, wandering. Waiting for your glass or farm to come again, trying to guess which it will be.

And it will repeat.

I'm thinking of you, for the the first time in eons, it seems. And it's your birthday. And I don't know if I miss you.

Sunday

Sunday is evident in this house, there's barely any noise and what noise there is is lazy and slow. It floats, sweeping past doors and making sure that any action that might have been planned is changed to resonant inaction, you might want to do it, you might have planned to do it with every detail spoken for and no room for error. But, Sunday is here. You're not going to do it.

Some are lucky, Sunday cannot change your mind if someone else, not in the house where Sunday currently haunts, has decided your plan of action then Sunday cannot stop you. Her ethereal features move to a frown when she realises she cannot keep you. She doesn't like it, not at all. The thought of her toys leaving her well-preseved play area is not one she enjoys or expects. When you do leave it, through your own will, she lets out a wail hoping that it will stop you in your tracks and bring you back. But it doesn't.

There are noises, getting louder as the time speeds past. Sunday begins to panic, the house is no longer sleepy, it is alive and moving. She's running out of time, soon she'll have to move on and find another house and more people to keep sleeping and calm and unproductive.

She closes her eyes, a frown still on her face and a pout on her lips, turns to the door and slips through, as if she were never there at all.