Reflections

The back porch feels as if it expands out indefinitely into the woods that surround her, a forever growing space between the two distances of her past and present. If she looks far enough in the distance, Charlie is sure that she can see into her future. When she is old and frail, unable to make her way up the stairs. As if feeling the strain of her impending physicality, her legs feel tired. She almost feels as if she’s walked in circles around the house, unsure how she even got to this point in time. The porch itself wraps around the house, hugging it. It starts outside the dining room on the right side of the house, looping behind following the stairs down, making an alcove of the perimeter. Right now, Charlie is in the back by the family room, if she turned her head just to the left she would be able to look in the sliding glass doors that led to a space she was all too familiar with. Just when Charlie’s curiosity was about to lead her to — with her forehead to the glass, as a kid in the aquarium might — look into the living room, the crack of a branch snapping caught her attention. 

 

Whipping her head around, Charlie tries to catch whatever it was that made the noise. Eyes strained, breathing still. Charlie didn’t move a muscle except for that which made her eyes rotate around her skull. Enough time passes that she is sure it had all been in her head, that the sound was a combination of the past memories bouncing around her head, two moments in time coming together to make an uncomfortable whole in the present. 

 

As soon as she convinces herself that it was nothing, a movement out of the corner of her eye snaps her back into focus. A flash of pink, bright and eager, moving behind and between the trees in the distance. A pink that is so familiar that when she can’t figure out where it is from she grows frustrated. 

 

Stepping up to the edge of the deck, hands on the wooden railing, Charlie tries to gain a better vantage point. A support. A wall. The railing is strong beneath her, strong enough to hold her up when she gets a glimpse of the young girl, again. The girl she saw on her ride over to the house. 

 

Charlie looks around her to see if anyone else is seeing her, before realizing that she is still alone. That, she has actually been alone for so much longer than she realized. Looking at her watch, Charlie tries to remember when they drove up to the house. The past hour or so is already a distant memory. 

 

Looking back at the girl in the woods, really only a soft pink outline in the dense amalgamation of greens and browns, Charlie feels a certain tension she cannot place. She feels pulled to her but also the desire to run away as quickly as possible. As if being in the same place as the girl defies the laws of physics she doesn’t understand nor really care about. 

 

The desire to save the girl, to nurture her, overwhelms Charlie. Not because of how strong it is but its presence at all. Charlie has had every chance to care for a child — all of which she has passed on happily. But now, standing in the woods with the girl 50 feet ahead, Charlie begins to wonder if Bill had a point in their countless arguments for the past decade. Maybe Charlie is ready to talk again about it.