In the backyard

  
Short story :
The other night, she was in the backyard of her mother’s house again after all these years of being a hostile estranged daughter. The walls looked familiar, however when she extended her hand to touch one of them, they bled 10 years of emptiness, dropping her heart to her knees. Escaping the felony of her father was as arduous as writing the last letter that her mother never found.The photographs on the wall tell poignant stories about a happy motherhood of a woman who lives only in photographs now, relinquishing all else.

She had always felt a different smell whenever she stepped into a different household, as a child, she was told it was the smell of parenting and the cordless ties of the family, it is peculiar how the smell is still so familiar to her after all these years. The curtains have faded from black to gray, best like her memories about her mother have, except for the blonde hair and thin lips she inherited from her.The palm tree in the backyard has grown, not more than her insecurities though, they’ve held to her stomach like intestines. Both small and big. She is aware pain is biological too.She holds the door of the living room for a good one minute, reasons unknown to her mindful self. 

She hears a baby crying, baffled she turns around to look and finds herself on the couch and her daughter snuggled to her stomach like a monkey’s baby. The happy dream was over again, it was time she changed the nappy!