The flash fiction prompt for the next issue of Mslexia is 250 words on "Rejuvenation". I can't send this in because I'm not a "woman who writes". (But I still think it's the best writing mag around!) So, I'll share it here.
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I hadn’t been back in forty years. It was the place of my innocence.
Finding myself back in a town expanded in every direction - houses, streets, and history, on what had been fields where cows grazed, or where wild-flowers were picked – I start walking.
I know I don’t know the way. My feet tell me differently, taking me, unerringly, to the shelter of my first five years.
But, what to do? Stand and stare, like a weirdo? So, I walk slowly by on the other side of the road. There’s the house, the bay-window that flooded my tiny world with sunshine, the doorstep I fell, face first, from into the snow, the path to the back-garden of many adventures.
The boxes are ticked. I am amazed to find it almost as we left it. The décor I can see suggests one other family might have lived there all this time.
And, yet... There is none of the connection I hoped for.
I’m intruding. I wonder if people are watching, wondering, thinking of calling the police. I’m tempted to keep walking, past where the street used to end, and just... deal with the disappointment. I’m old. It’s gone.
Then, on an urge that comes from I-know-not-where, I step into the gutter. Sit on the pavement. (Anyone watching will be really worried!) Now, I’m the same height I was when I was five. I’m wearing shorts and t-bar sandals.
And, I see it! The connection is made.
Oh, Mum!
I’m home!
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