rossery_turner@hotmail.com

    The laughter of children enjoying the last hours of light. In a playground full to the brim, like a man’s glass on a Saturday evening, his thoughts occupied but his heart bare.
    A bright flash blinds them for a second before their eyes readjust and the baby boy opens his eyes for the first time. This is the happiest point, an everlasting feeling of everything and nothing. No fear or worry, only love and joy.
    Now at present, that feeling brings only tears.

    Spring, a new day, a fresh morning. There they are, laughing, joking, care free and serene. He kicks the ball to his son, who catches it as a smile spreads across his face. Looking on, his wife abandons her current task and darts in. She catches the ball from their boy’s kick. She throws it back and her husband leans over, kissing her on the cheek and looking deeply into her eyes. They are there for a moment, lost with each other, in that feeling that can only be found with that person. That one person cannot be replaced.
    Escaping to the past, these perfect moments are a dream, never again reality. Cold lips and a broken heart, kisses in the past, dreams and hopes crushed. Never wanting to replace, only rewind time instead of merely exploring it continuously, over and over again. His eyes running like the rain was falling on that night.
    In the evening, ball on the car floor, their son asleep. She smiles at him as they stop in front of a red glow. Rain falls and attacks the roof of the car, like an army bombarding their enemy. A warning sign, blatant now but was too faint and imperceptible. She looks to the left and the rain eases, enough for her to see his face through the shimmering glass. Eyes closed, unaware.

Morning light shines upon yellow tape, surrounding the fading smell of alcohol. Sirens wail as a crowd gathers and the tamed flame will not return. However, neither will others. Too lost in their trails of thought and reasoning to consider him. Bruised, burned and bleeding from his side. No worry, not about the wounds. His mind snaps back to reality and his eyes dart from side to side and then fix. Locked on that blackened spot.

Now staring down an empty glass, his fourth in the hour, regret, memories, happiness fading away into darkness, the darkness of that night. That night replayed again and again, in every dream, every time the dark takes over the light.

Now with no light and no hope, no love. Darting back and forth between memories, through time and through emotions. Time travel at it’s lowest, travelling through eternity, without any change, all in thoughts.

But now, physically through time, he has no choice, in the future there is nothing; it’s all in the past. And that’s the one place he can no longer go. His life was over on that night, but now they’ve recorded it, it’s official.