Yesterday

Time has a habit of misbehaving...

Yesterday,

I think it was…

anyway it feels like yesterday…

when we were tidying in Mum and Dad’s room

Mum found her Dad’s old diary

in a box of photographs.

It was just a little black book

with Diary printed on the front

and seven days to a page.

He’d written on some of the days

“9.30 Dentist”

“Elsie’s Birthday”

It was from 1939…

she was only a girl then,

Mum,

six years old

which was like forever ago.

On one page

on one day

in pencil

Granddad had written

“War broke out.”

The writing was so big the words spilled out from between the lines.

Mum read them out.

She smiled at me

then looked back at the diary.

A drop of water fell onto the page.

Then she told me she was sorry for crying

that it was silly to cry over something

that happened forever ago.

But it looked to me

like it was still happening

inside her…

She wiped her eyes

and hugged me

stroking my hair with her hand

as if I were the one who was crying.

I watched her looking at the writing

her Dad had written

forever ago.

Yesterday,

well it feels like yesterday.