Written for Great Minds Think –
“What Next: Friday Challenge”.
Our hosts, Sarah & Rohini, ask
us to write a poem or story using
any or all of these five clues:
a woman sits on a train platform, softly crying
a half-filled box of keepsakes lies sitting on the bed
a letter lies waiting by an envelope not yet sealed
a spotlight shines on an empty stage
looking into the mirror you see your much older/younger self
The box on the bed was only half full, and Marion had stopped filling it an hour ago.
Everything that remained seemed impossible to sort: a pressed corsage that had faded to sepia, her father’s watch that had stopped at 4:05 one winter and never been wound again, a stack of crayon drawings signed CARLY in letters that leaned like tired fence posts. Forty years in this house, and the realtor wanted it empty by Friday.
She rose to stretch her back and caught herself in the closet mirror. For a moment, she didn’t recognize the woman there: gray at the temples, mouth set in a tired line. It was her mother’s face, exactly as it had looked the last time Marion saw her, the year they stopped speaking over something neither of them could remember. Marion touched her own cheek, and the woman in the mirror did the same.
On the dresser, beside an envelope addressed in her best handwriting, a letter lay waiting. Three pages to her daughter. I should have called. I should have come to the wedding. I was proud and I was wrong. She had written it twice and read it a dozen times, and still the envelope sat open, its flap curled upward like an unanswered question.
The afternoon sun slid lower and came through the west window in a single bright ray. It skipped the boxes, the bare walls, the rolled-up rug, and settled on one of Carly’s drawings: two stick figures holding hands beneath a lopsided yellow sun. ME AND MOM, it said. Everything else in the room fell into shadow. Only that remained illuminated, like the star of the show, the only thing that mattered.
Marion didn’t seal the envelope. She folded the letter into her coat pocket, tucked the drawing beside it, and called for a cab.
The station was nearly empty at dusk. She sat on a cold bench beneath the departures board, the 6:40 to Philadelphia blinking On Time, and found that she was crying. It wasn’t sadness, exactly. It was the strange ache of having waited too long for something and finally deciding not to wait anymore.
A young woman across the platform glanced over, then politely looked away.
Marion wiped her eyes and smiled at nothing. Some things shouldn’t go in an envelope. Some things you had to say yourself, out loud, before the mirror showed you anyone older.
The train’s headlight appeared down the track, and she stood to meet it.
NAR©2026
This is “Home” by Blake Shelton
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me unless otherwise indicated, and may not be used without permission. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
