Magpie 32

This piece for Magpie Tales continues on from my Magpie 31 and 29. Enjoy...

April pulls the second drawer out of the dresser and piles the clothes into her bag. She pushes them down hard on top of the previous pile. It's like de ja vu and her stomach stirs sickly. She sits on the edge of the bed and remembers back to when she was packing at home. Her old bedroom. Painted the lightest and calmest shade of purple with her purple sheets and purple doonar. With posters of singers on the walls stuck tackily with tape. The room was her haven but she had to run from it and now again she had to run from her haven. Outside the window it is pitch black with no verandah light like her childhood home. Her eye begins to twitch with worry. For the first time in two years she feels anxious. She's worried for her future. Jeremy had always taught her from the day they met you have to take each day as it comes, not dwell on the past and not worry about the future.

She lays her back down on the bed with her legs dangling off the edge. Slightly swaying she hears them hit against something. She sits up and sees the small box she'd packed with bits and pieces not too long ago and had forgotten about.

Sticking out of the old books and magazines sits a little hourglass she had been given just before having to run away. She remembers clearly the last frantic minutes she'd spent in the purple room. Shoving clothes and a toothbrush with an old teddy and the last thing she grabbed as she ran from the room was the hourglass that sat out of place by her little ornaments. She'd stood by the door and stared at it for several moments. She tapped her foot impatiently with thoughts racing around her mind confusing her. With the sound of a door opening she shoved it into the bag and ran. The last time she left her teenage bedroom it was through the side window.

She clutched the hourglass in her hands and felt the tears push their way out her eyes. Time was something she wished she had had more of. Something she wished she still had more of now. Time had always rushed them. It had rushed her and her husband away. It had rushed them to make decisions, that including some not very good ones. Time was something she wished she could go back in and change. But as she watched the sand move through the tiny little hourglass she realised she was running out of time and she had to make good decisions because time was something she was never going to get back.