You cross the overgrown meadow in the twilight as the haunting calls of mockingbirds fade into the dusk. Can you hear it? The melody of a lost childhood, echoing in your mind. Maybe you will feel the light breeze whispering upon your cheeks, thick with the scent of an incipient autumn. Above you the mountains blaze in the sunset, mosaics of burnished golden leaves. All around you, the tall grasses yield to the rising wind, arcing down to a point near breaking. As the deep stalks engulf you, shielding your hunched shoulders from view. You are nearly broken. The wind presses heavily upon you, bending you mercilessly.

You emerge from the grass tunnel in front of the old barn that hugs the edge of the meadow. Do you remember the old tire that hung from the maple that summer? Do you remember the footprint of a boy in the thick mud beside it, the fraying yellow rope? But the relentless turn of the earth snapped the rope and pushed the boy and his dreams far away.

Feet planted squarely against the unforgiving earth, you stand square to the peeling red paint of the barn door. The fading light sends shadows playing across the worn wood. Do you remember the lazy summer days of the past? Do you remember the laughter of the boys in the creek, the wooden doors swinging in the mild breeze? How the air was thick with happiness?

The hinges creak open as you release the rusted latch. You step forward and the doors swallow you, leaving the meadow bare in the twilight.

My hand presses flush against the windowpane. The glass is cold under my fingers I watch the lonely sunset. When my eyes are closed I can picture it splintering under my touch into a million icy fragments and sending me spinning to earth with a mother’s broken heart.

Was that what it felt like?

In a city a world away a young man had stood tense beside an office window as the world burned around him. Fire rose in a great wall behind him and he had closed his eyes. He remembered swinging high above the ground on an old Ford tire. The fraying yellow rope had chafed his hands and he held on as he skimmed over the meadow grass. His father called him from the red barn edging the meadow, and he had waited until the swing arced high into the blue of the sky before letting go. He flew through the air, a graceful tangle of youth and joy. Framed in the sunlight, he was a silhouette against the summer morning.

The man had stood on the brink of the windowsill with his eyes clamped shut, gripping the frame tightly. He could almost feel the rough fibers of the yellow rope beneath his hands. He took a deep breath and let go, free-falling into the smoky darkness. Above him, the towers collapsed in a deadly wave, shrouding the city in a perpetual night.

From the bedroom window I catch strained glimpses through the barn doors of the dull flannel of your shirt. You are walking back and forth, pacing the creaking floorboards. Twilight finally consumes the meadow and all I can do is imagine.

Inside the barn there is an old wooden bed, worn but strong. Smooth white cotton that used crease the face of a boy in the tranquility of sleep. Are you sitting on the bare linens? Have the traces of his smell, still permeating the September air, found you yet?

But he’s gone. All that remains is a faint dent in the pillow with the lingering scent of a lost childhood, and a broken yellow rope swinging in the breeze.