It was fall again. How the seasons sort of linger, though, you wouldn't know it. It was still so very hot. Too hot for the new fall sweaters she had managed to get for herself.

Still not as hot as home. Where she grew up where she spent most of her adulthood, even. Further from the water, it was so much hotter. She dreamt of home just last night.

Not such a good dream. Fumbling for a key to enter the home she grew up in, she dug into her large bag. Every time she found a set of keys, alas, they were not the right fit. Every set of keys that she pulled out was a set of keys for a past home. A past life. Even in the dream, she recognized each set. Some bigger, some smaller. The keys with the big gold tassel. The keys that opened every door at work…

None opened the front door of her child hood home. Not in this unconscious experience.

She awoke, finally, in the home she had been in at least the past four years. Her chest heaved as she recalled what she had just dreamt. She inventories her current life as she still felt wrapped up in what she lived in the dream - her childhood home, her mother , her dog, her keys.

Her mother has been gone going on eight years. Her dog is cozy in bed. Her partner lay deeply asleep. The childhood home is long sold. Her keys that open this place lie still.

How did I get here? It's more difficult for her to recall now. Like with any heart stopping memory, she has worked to bury it, bury the movie like reel of memories that build up like a crescendo.

Failures missteps tragedies poor choice and even a stroke of luck amidst it all. That's how she got here.

She doesn't remember how she got here.

But she is rewriting how

it all turns out.

Allison Marshall

@AllisonsEgo

Vallejo CA

Allison Marshall has not written a story.