A Glass Winter

A room can hold a thousand memories. Every heartbreak, argument, bubble of joy, seeping into the furniture. If these walls could talk. A family grows...

Looking down at her phone she see’s six missed calls from her mother. Wiping her dewy eye’s, she stows it back in her purse; swapping it for a hip flask full of vodka. She didn’t feel like flirting for drinks tonight.

Heat, oppressive heat. They said it would be 39°C in the city. Those unfortunate enough to be outside hustled from one air-conditioned lobby to another, a constant tirade of disbelief. It cannot be this hot, this is ridiculous.

The weight lifting from his shoulders seemed to inspire a scream of applause from nature itself. Never had this patio, this garden, these hills, moved him so deeply.

Clear as his two steaming jailers, he saw her twisted form, moving ever so slightly in the moment before absolute death. A second playing on an endless loop, his wife shifting into silence, a shiver almost too small to see, and now he was condemned to see it always.