Weekly Writing – February 17 2024

It had been eight years, six months, and three days since she had last stood on the porch of her childhood home. If it had been eight years, six months, and two days, her mother would have been there to greet her.
But that was the cruel thing about time, wasn’t it? You almost never knew how much you had in your account until you had overdrawn it. There were no loans, no grace periods. She had delayed her trip home for one week because of a friend’s baby shower, and that meant time had run out without her.
No negotiations. Just the hard click of her key turning in the lock and the silence where her mother’s voice should have been. One pair of white, sensible slip-on shoes tucked under the bench where she had learned to tie hers, a different poster above it, but from the same theatre. The same stout wooden clock still leaned worryingly far from the wall opposite, still grinding faithfully away at time. Her mother had always joked that it would outlive all of them.
She laid a hand on its bonnet, through the thick, velvety layer of dust that had collected there. Then, tightening her grip until the dust piled around her fingers, she wrenched the clock forward, crashing, to the floor.