Image copyright of Andrew Beebee found here.

Slowly, dreamily, as one does when they wake from a long dream-less sleep, she opened her eyes. It must have been early, she thought, as the light that filtered blurringly into her vision was a cold, grey and life-less one. A yawn escaped her dry lips and with it the stretching of the arms, legs, back and the obligatory pointing of the toes which, more often than not, resulted in foot cramp.

At least that was the same.

As her eyes adjusted to wakefulness, she scanned the room and its contents. The dust covered PCs on top of the wardrobe, looked on like silent sentinels. Clothes that hadn’t been worn due to their ill-fitting tendencies, bulged from draws, cupboards and dark, musty places under the bed and in the bed itself lay the person that she’d fallen in love with all those years ago. Sleeping. That peaceful, carefree kind of sleep with only the subtlest of snores.

She didn’t recognise that person. Neither did she know the tired-looking female that stared out at her from the mirror opposite. Silver peppered her faded, box-dyed hair and the lines at the corners of her eyes and lips spoke more than words ever could. Looking down at her sagging chest and shape-less body only confirmed to her the worst of it.

This was what she had become.

She knew that if she padded out of the bedroom and onto the landing, that she would face two rooms and that in those rooms would be the three small children that she had brought screaming into the world. Knowing how innocently they all slept now, made it almost impossible to believe the memories of blood, pain, tears and overwhelming joy that she still had of that time.

Back then things were different. The stuff of dreams were to be made and their world would be a more wonderful place and for a time, it had been. It had been all that he had ever wanted. What she hadn’t bargained on however, was that she would almost cease to be. That her dreams would be forgotten – would lay trampled and crumbling, like so many autumn leaves, under careless feet.

She looked again at his slumbering form, her eyes penetrating the quilt as if somehow, if she looked hard enough, she would truly be able to grasp what it was that kept the silence between them. But no matter how hard she stared, she knew that there would be no answers. Like a closed book was his mind to her – his thoughts, secreted away, as if turning the page would unleash a torrent that would wash away the person that she believed him to be.

With a last look at the mirror, she lowered herself back onto the bed and allowed her head to be cradled gently in the soft, comforting embrace of the pillow.

“Not today”, was the whisper that drifted upon the breeze that morning.

“Not today”.