We Found An Unfortunate Echo

Because it was, after all, a long song, we rested easy, we knew we had time, like waiting in a line, or falling in a dream, or scanning the sky for faint stars, or looking down the street hoping to see the bus.

Hopping to see the bus, the child was pretending to be a rabbit pretending to be interested in buses.  The hopping got tiring; the child however did not have to pretend too hard to want to see the bus.  The kid adored the bus.

The kid adorned the bust with flowers & tiny figurines she found on a shelf in the attic.  She wanted to know, perhaps, exactly who the bust was supposed to represent, but she loved her anyway.  & she pretended it wasn't always white, that once it had some color.

Once its handsome color was enhanced by the sun, we stood in that slightly pretentious pensive manner & admired it, heaping considered praise on the artist who, it must be said, took our admiration with excessive modesty.  Perhaps she also blushed.

Perhaps she also brushed her hair with the old brush her mother left her.  Everyone knew that she kept a box of her mother's things to go through in her darker moments.  So many regrets, so many things left unsaid.  How could that tiny box hold them all?

The tiny box told them all that they had come in vain.  They were not going to be buzzed up; the host was not feeling well; the party was cancelled.  Standing around the crumbling doorstep, a slight mist descending on them, they decided then & there to have the party in the street.

Partly in the street, partly on the sidewalk, most of my belongings were strewn.  They hardly seemed like mine, to be honest, so hastily & haphazardly were they thrown from the second floor during the fire.  Here's what I was thinking: you should've let it all burn.

You should've let it all turn to gold, you should've wished for more precious metals, you've should've taken as many baubles as possible, filling your pockets & cupping your hands.  Instead, you were literally empty-handed.  You escaped with less than you had when you arrived.

She took your hand when you arrived, a perhaps too-familiar gesture, but one which gave you comfort at the right moment.  No one expects death, even the death of the very old.  It was a strange song to bring you together, though, not because it was sad or painful, but because it was, after all, the wrong song.