Photo by Dakota Roos on Unsplash

The Developers

S.E. Bourne

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The developers had surrounded us. Penned us in and talked my sister into selling. 3 million for all the lots.

My mother was telling her through the aether that it was a fine price.

I was even going to get some outlay.

But I wandered the length of the property and sat at the window on the south side in my mother’s old bedroom.

I was distraught. Sick. In complete dread.

The number was too low. Other lots had sold for 1.6, in areas not nearly as prime as ours.

And I didn’t want to sell — not for all the wealth of the world.

But my sister was thrilled and I had no say.

I sat in front of the south window in the bedroom, in one of the old high back oak chairs and sobbed.

I woke to the sounds of the neighborhood under construction.

I was to walk at 5am today but had only slept two hours and now it was 9am.

The slight feelings of well being from yesterday gone.

I know I would feel better if I moved — but gravity has its hold and my brain is on high fry and the world is too bright and the air too warm and I want not to exist.

The sound of a small plane circling. Fanciful and ominous.

A bunker day.

A pill day.

A put off everything till tomorrow day, as the days seem not to matter anymore and I am a woman in a bad time of personal and global history.

Why bother with any reclaim, the fight against the all — physically and psychically deadening.

Why bother.

I have always wanted out.

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