Wrong Place Wrong Time

by Gillian McAllister

he the lark and she the nightingale.

take ten deep breaths and make a coffee,

but she still misses him in the way that children will always miss their parents’ guiding hands, the way they can hold your problems away from you, if only temporarily.

How sinister it is to relive your life backward. To see things you hadn’t at the time. To realize the horrible significance of events you had no idea were playing out around you.

Two kids and a woman who could make him laugh. Building his own family unit again, from the rubble of his upbringing.

“Sometimes,” he says gently, when she’s finished, “the emotions of living something the first time prevent us from seeing the true picture, don’t they?” He rubs at his beard. “If I could go back – the things in my life that I would just stand and truly, fully witness, if I knew how they were going to turn out .

We only think of the bad things that happen, rather than those that, through fortune, pass us by.