How He Got Home

By Peter Bowden



It wasn’t a grand journey. No battles, no dragons, no heroic last stands. Just a worn-out shoe, a long stretch of road, and the hum of cicadas loud enough to blur out the pain in his knees. He passed places that once knew his name—shuttered storefronts, a rusted sign swinging on a single chain, the old fence where he split his shin chasing a dare. No one waved. No one needed to. He wasn’t returning for fanfare. He was returning for something quieter, something that had waited without needing proof.
The sun melted behind the trees, leaving the sky bruised and thick with heat. Still he walked, each step drawing out a memory—her laughter echoing from the kitchen, the dog barking at the mail truck, the way the wind curled through the porch screen like it had business of its own. When the house finally appeared, it looked smaller, gentler somehow. The paint was peeling. So was he. But the door still opened without a fuss. The key turned like no time had passed. The air inside held the hush of things waiting.
He didn’t cry. He eased into the rocker, laid his hand on the familiar curve of its arm, and breathed in the scent of dust and yesterday. There were no trumpets, no sudden light, no name called from the sky. Just the hush of a house that had been waiting, silent and still, as if it always knew he’d find his way back. That’s how he got home. Not with a bang. But with a whisper and the sound of his steps on old wood.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Woman Who Folded Her Way to Glory

By Peter Bowden
Image
She folded t-shirts at first. Part-time, under fluorescent lights that flickered like indecisive lightning. The shirts were always the wrong size or the wrong color or folded the wrong way, but she smiled anyway. People asked her where the bathrooms were. Sometimes she told them. Sometimes she pointed vaguely, just for sport. It was the beginning of something, though no one—not even she—knew what. In time, she went full-time. Gave tours with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for puppies or preachers. Her voice could bounce off stone and charm a bored teenager. She wrote press releases that made people care about sidewalk chalk festivals and the grand opening of the third best coffee shop in town. She remembered birthdays. Brought cake. Brought joy. She once stapled her blouse to a budget report and didn't notice until after the staff meeting. It became legend. She was that kind of legend. And now—after 29 years, 10,713 days, 4 broken office chairs, 113 bad hair days, 7 crises...
Read more

She Was Always Sad

By Peter Bowden
Image
She was always sad, though most people never noticed. She laughed at the right times, nodded when spoken to, and never once caused a scene. But there was a heaviness behind her eyes, like clouds that never moved, just hovered quietly. At the coffee shop, she always took the seat by the window, looking out as if waiting for someone who never came. The truth was, she had once loved with the kind of fullness that makes you believe you’ll never be alone again. A hand in hers, a voice calling her name from across a quiet room, the warmth of another body curled beside her in the coldest months. And then one day, the world cracked open, and he was gone. Just like that. No storm. No explosion. Just silence where there had once been everything. So she carried that silence. Not with drama or despair, but with the quiet dignity of someone who had known something precious and lost it. Her sadness wasn’t bitterness—it was love, still alive, with nowhere to go. And so she let it live inside her, s...
Read more

Things Are Quiet

By Peter Bowden
Image
The house was quiet now. The mornings came and went like old friends who had grown tired of the visit. He would sit at the kitchen table with his hands around a coffee cup that had long gone cold, staring at the empty chair across from him. The ache was not loud, nor did it rage. It sat in his chest like a stone sunk to the riverbed, unmoved by the current of passing days. He thought about the way she would hum softly while drying the dishes, the sound slipping through the cracks of his memory like sunlight through a dusty window. He missed her without ceremony, without grand displays. It was a dull, persistent throb that never asked for attention but never left him alone. Sometimes he would walk the old path down to the river, where they once threw crumbs to the ducks and talked about small things that seemed bigger then. The air was thick with the scent of pine, and he could hear the water moving over the rocks, just as it always had. It made him angry sometimes—how the world did not...
Read more