I get tired of writing about myself so today I decided to write some flash fiction. 

           

          Colleen stands before the kitchen calendar counting the days till Christmas. A month since Daylight Savings Time ended but she's still trying to adjust to dark afternoons. Yesterday she didn't see a group of kids walking in the road until she was right upon them.  She came around a corner and there they were, like a small herd of cows bumping into each other in their dark clothes. She hit the brakes just in time. The screech sounded like an injured animal. Her wrists prickled with fear.

          "No one can see you!" she yelled at them, rolling down her window.

          The kids scurried to the weedy shoulder, and looked at her with open mouths.           

          "Really," she said more softly. "You should wear reflectors." 

          She could see now that they were young teens and one of them was a girl   with a pale face and big dark eyes. The girl blinked. "Sorry," she said softly.

          "Do you need a ride?" Colleen asked. 

          The kids looked at each other and back at her without answering.

          "I'm Colleen MacDonald, I live just down the road, the blue house on the hill?" 

          "Oh yeah," one of the boys said. "We're sorry about your son."

          "Do you need a ride?" Colleen asked again.  The kids looked at each other then the girl nodded. Colleen unlocked the doors.  The girl got in the front seat. Three boys piled in to the back. Colleen accelerated slowly, breathing in the scent of youth. She wished she could stop the car, reach over and embrace the girl, draw her close and absorb her ignorant vitality. 

          What would these children do with their unspent days? Did they sense, as she did, how time gobbles up moments until everything you think you have is gone?  One day you're a family, the next day you're floating, observing yourself standing in your kitchen staring at the calendar.