A Whistling Wind

Wind whistles through rotten, hanging clapboards; through cracked and broken windows and down the hallway, dark with the dinge and dust of years. Whistling its way over carpet, thick-shagged with mold, past water-worn rivulets in wooden paneling kissed by age and small rodents scurrying away from soundless feet. A tuneless tune flowing past a beam of dirty sunlight and through a pale young man standing silent before the door.

The door. And one his hand has touched before, its fiberboard still feeling smooth, soft and plastic beneath his fingers, its warped stiffness resistant as the wind whistles through the frame. Rusted hinges fall back with a mammalian squeal, opening the door on an empty, silent room crowded with bare walls; one curtain dancing to the whistle song.

Empty, everywhere but in his mind.

Silent feet flow over boards rotten and stained, but his eyes see deep blue carpet of lifetimes ago. His fingers trail lightly over posters of sports legends and race cars as decaying plaster crumbles to the floor behind him.

Colors from the bright bed cover reflect in rainbows against the ceiling white. Ribbons and trophies lining shelves of pride over a dresser with the tip of a sock poking from the top drawer.

Energy from thousands of days filled with laughter, pain, love, and heartbreak, good-night kisses of a mother, father’s tousling of a young boy’s hair...his eyes fill and overflow, spilling tears down pale cheeks and through the floorboards.

They are falling still.

The wind whistles through a lifeless, decaying room—empty still—and past a curtain, fluttering white banner of long ago. He takes one last look and one last listen to the wind...

Before whistling away on its back.