FRIENDS
I’m 16, hopping fences, one backyard to the next. It’s Fall and the air is hinting that winter is on its way. It’s one of those nights when you can smell everyone’s dinner cooking. It’s dark out, earlier than the previous month and the kitchen lights are on. I can see entire families seated at the table, eating, talking, enjoying the end of another day together. I see single people alone, watching TV, eating slowly, stepping outside of themselves, wondering, when this became their nightly routine and how they ending up alone. I reach my house and enter the back door that we keep open because I am always losing or forgetting my keys. There are meals prepared for the week by my mother. My parents are both working, and my brothers are nowhere in sight. I warm up some chicken and rice and I am just about to chow down when the phone starts ringing, back in the day when everyone had a “land line” and if you were talking and someone else was trying to reach you, well they got a “busy” signal