Potton

I daydream a lot. I dream about my dinner plans, the quarrels at work, the anxieties from drunken decisions the weekend before. Sometimes, though, my mind drifts to darker places—the regrets, the heartaches, for those instances where a firmer “no” should have gracefully danced off my lips or the times my tongue bore the brunt of my restraint, leaving a metallic tang of unsaid words. And then, sometimes I daydream of her.

She stands there, muddy-footed, pants stained, sagging a bit below her small hips, a butterfly net in one hand and the other twirling her knotty blonde hair. We lock eyes, her naive smile and bright blue eyes brimming with life, teeming with potential, with joie de vivre.

“Come on,” she says, clumsily running down a green-grassed hill toward the pond.

And then a weight hits me, and my head starts to spin. Sadness starts to build like a reservoir in my chest. How her smile will grow spiritless. Her feet seem too small to walk the long path ahead, yet she will. I follow her down to the pond; her innocent face looks up, happy to have a friend, someone who wants to listen.

“I will listen to everything you want to say,” I tell her, “but first, come here.” I kneel before her and wrap my arms around her. I feel her small heartbeat against mine.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, her sticky hands gently brushing away a tear from my cheek.

“Nothing,” I say with an unconvincing smile. I hold her wiggly body close and whisper – “I’m sorry, none of it was ever your fault.”