Out there it waits. Between fifteen and sixteen, cold and dusty, out there it waits. It could wait forever, looming and unseen until the heat of summer or a whirl of dust starts sparkling in the sunlight and gives it away. Out there it waits. How many times have I told Gabriel to shut the front door? This time the dog got out and the cold winter breeze, waiting in the hall, came in so I yelled to Gabriel, “How many times have I told you?”

            Most days I would come in, drop my coat down, open the curtain on the windows overlooking the street, call out to Gabriel, my eight year old, “I’m home!” Usually there would be no sound and I would look in his room to see his bed made and his baseball bat gone. I knew he was at the park with Max practicing ground balls and pitches. So I would dress and go to join them, with a basket of extra baseballs and gatorade, calling out, “numbers and inches, boys, numbers and inches.”

            Today I did not go down to the park, no reason to. Instead I sat on the couch watching a movie, but when the kissing part came, I had tears and pink carnations in my heart and excused myself to the bedroom to cry.

            What fun Gabriel and I would have had today. My nose may have stopped me from kissing him, only to tickle him all the more. Normally I would have been against going out on a rainy day, but today I would have said, “Big Gabe, let’s go throw some balls because baseball games get played in the rain sometimes.”

            Instead I have several hours before night; the mental chains unlocked from the bed and chose not to sit behind the chair again. When he was four we’d giggle and hide from each other. He’d pretend to hide until I’d find him then he’d shoot at me with a gun made from his hand, blowing the smoke from his finger, turning and running from me. His little arms pumping at his sides, his shoe untied and clothes mismatched.

            I was blown over completely. One minute I was sitting with the television turned off and dealing with what is, what is not, and what there is. I had hours to decide in and that was the hardest thing, I never looked at his picture, or sat in the kitchen but waited at the dining room table for the door bell to ring. There was calmness to the man who walked in like the calmness that comes from knowing reasoning is useless. His eyes searched me for what he knew to find, but could not. It was the sag in my spirit, the lag between my words that gave my blue soul away. I could see it in my reflection in the peering stainless steel oven, why couldn’t he?

            He was here with colored news expecting me to forget my genius ways and meet with the news in tap shoes. I thought, “You’ve made a terrible mistake, wasted your time,” wiping my aching eye and nose with the back of my sleeve. I tapped my finger on the kitchen table, “listen,” I whispered as I turned my ear, tapping, “it’s a hollow, sort of, shallow sound. It’s the only sound I hear in my heart since Gabriel died.” I put my hand-up blunting the conversation. “No thank you. Not today,” I said. He left quietly. I placed my head on the table only to wake up later with isolated stage fright, determined not to buy a gun today.