II. Home
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
The little toy soldier is covered with rust,
And his musket molds in the hands.
The once well-maintained garden is now a haven for weeds.
Some plants, some flowers died and were never replaced – frozen in the cold winter air or languished under the scorching sun. Some other, the stronger ones, only grew free and wild and now crawl over the pathways and among the tall grass. Some of them even started climbing on the wall of the mansion, quietly aiming to the roof.
Inside, the air tastes like dust.
It's everywhere – it lays on the wooden floors and grays all those meters of white cloth they had to use to cover the furniture.
Sometimes, when a ray of sunshine makes its way through the shutters, it becomes visible, slowly dancing in the still air.
It's the only thing that moves.
It's the only thing that inhabits this house, along with silence and shades of darkness.
There's nothing else – not memories, because there's no one to remember them.
Not ghosts, not echoes of the past – even if people would think to find them.
But the bodies were taken away and buried, the floor was soaped and scrubbed until no sign of blood or chalk outlines could be seen anymore.
Maybe some traces still remain, invisibly clinging to the inner fibers of wood – the tragedy now part of the house itself. Still there, but buried deep within.
A strange atmosphere fills every room – but it's not because of that.
It could be compared to human feelings – to lonely resignation and stubborn waiting wrapped together, like threads in a carpet, to the point it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Between the two of them, the latter is still the stronger – even if the former creeps up a little bit with every passing year.
When it will be just that, the house will be completely abandoned. But until then, it's waiting – waiting for someone who promised to come back and set everything right, set everything as it once used to be.
But the only thing that came, some years ago, were half a dozen cardboard boxes three stranger brought in and dropped off in one of the old bedrooms.
Years later, they're still closed, the layers of dust coating them quietly adding up until someday they will perfectly match those covering everything else.
There they are, right where they were first placed – next to a blue nightstand from which a dirty stuffed dog keeps sentinel over utter emptiness.
On that same nightstand, somebody placed a small frame with the glass cracked.
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue
Since he kissed them and put them there.
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I'd really appreciate the feedback- I have an exam tomorrow and I'm shamelessly updating to cheer myself up. After I'm done with that, I'll answer the older reviews as well. Thank you.