All the Lost Years

She glanced in the fridge, under the bed, in the closet, the attic, and then sat back on her haunches. They were gone, and she couldn’t find them.

Moving to her desk chair, she sat, picked up a pen that she tapped against her bottom lip while trying to ascertain the last place she was certain she had seen them.

Downstairs in the dinette.

Sun blazed in the room, stark, brilliant, unforgiving, and unflinchingly truthful. “They’re gone.”

“Ten years? How?”

“Carelessness. Don’t lose the next ten.”

“I was careful.”

“Too careful. Did you live, love, pay attention?”

No, no, she’d gotten lost, a little bitter, jealous, ugly.

The sun grinned. “You’ve got more time, Scrooge, make it right.”

Scrooge? What, certainly no comparison? Okay, maybe a little. “It’s time to live, love, pay attention, dance and sing!”

“Uh, Scrooge, I’ve heard you sing. Please, only in the shower,” said the sun before disappearing behind a cloud.

“Spoilsport.”

From that day on, she never lost so much as a minute.

end