BYGONE DAYS

poetic prose...decisions

We sip some tea and smile at each other

Christine asks me how I am feeling and some other  mundane questions

I reply with a smile and reveal that I am considering London as a temporary place to stay until I finally

determine steps to take

I inquire about affordable flats for me and my baby

and perhaps my soldier if he recovers

 

Christine queries about my past, my support

and other matters

I reveal some history of my prior life

which here-to-fore I have not mentioned

no one has caused me to discuss my past life

nay even the gentleman on the ship

therefore, I deem it necessary at this moment

 

My parents died when I was still young

in my teenage years

my older brother who was five years my senior

raised me until I was twenty-one

thereafter, I worked in what was then

my father’s coal business, he at the helm

yet, when he died my brother began to work there as well

and ultimately took control of the company

it grew into quite a large organization

I was a receptionist in the office

in general, I greeted customers and wrote memos

my brother worked with his hands in the coal, became a manager and  had duties to fulfill

 

We lived in a rather large Victorian style home in

western Pennsylvania where both my brother and I were born

my mother was a homemaker who never had another job

we were a close-knit family until my mother developed pneumonia and died in hospital

my father desperately tried to take care of us as mother

would have preferred, yet we managed to prevail

until my father died of a heart attack when I was

fifteen

the business endured with my brother’s expertise

yet I sensed an irreversible loss realizing that I

was an orphan in my most vulnerable years

 

While I should have been social, dating

attending parties, confiding in friends

I shrouded myself in my own misery

lonesome and terrified, I managed to complete high school

subsequently, I made a short-sighted decision to move to New York City to go to a free city college and thereafter obtain a job

further, my brother informed me of the trust my father left us

 

that changed my manner of living forever

I continued to worked as a manager of a small department store

I lived in a modest apartment in Brooklyn, NY

Ultimately, I moved to the countryside and purchased a small house

That is where I met my love, the soldier

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Thank you for reading!