Summer was thick that evening. It was the ending hour of the day when light hangs heavy like a golden sea, teaming with thousands of busy bugs as it blankets the tips of hay grass hills.
My mind was at peace, drifting on undistracted waves of forgetfulness. Meadowlark lullabies rippled over the glowing grass, and my soul was still and full.
It was in that moment, legs dangling as I swayed gently on the porch swing, that my life changed forever.
Piercing the quiet solitude of my mind, rang the sound of a shot: unbearably loud, shockingly out of place. It ricocheted through my body in rapid slow motion, spinning my perspective like the sickening merry-go-round rides from my childhood, ripping and tearing my insides from head to foot.
Emptiness filled that favorite space, and death. The place called home, where the memories are, became home, where the memories die.
Eventually the bloody gashes closed up, less distracting and subdued, like blue, translucent bruises. But every mellow summer evening catches and presses on those bruises, and the silent violence of your absence ricochets around again, invisible as vertigo.
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