back into that future

published: 2012-08-09

I look straight into the future that no longer exists. My little boy stands in it, with dad. They are messing around. Back then, what I saw was an older version of dad sitting at the round kitchen table eating a sandwich with his teenager son. I was around too. Probably giving the roses some water. It was the kind of thing I’d do in that future we once shared. Or maybe leaning against the kitchen sink, reading a page of a book on some gadget. Only briefly looking up to smile at the image of them eating and chatting. And all of that was fine.
That future seemed transfixed. Like a painting. Yet it has shifted and moved, in both colour and tone. It’s not as warm, the light from the ceiling does not spill over the round kitchen table in a comforting glow. Instead, the bright spotlights in the hallway give deep contrasts to the scene which is now tainted in blues and greys. Do they ever sit at that kitchen table together, I wonder, that table at the end of the hallway? But of course they do. One day, other people might be sitting there with them. A woman, who they play cards with, and her children maybe. She’d probabl be better at being me in my past future.
My little boy’s hand doesn’t comfort me tonight. Not even the way he hold on to mine as he falls asleep and slowly releases his grip. Before he does though, I say I missed him. He says he missed me too.