The Loadstone
written by: Angela Huskisson
It sticks like fish bone in my airway before I force it down, where it pricks and rips. A last gasp for air, which brings its own rush. Because guilt is something terrible, built within too many structures, and combining too many feelings. Even the word casts unrelenting images of gold-encrusted caskets with well-worn locks and blood-red rubies rubbed to dust. All drenched in the ink of squid and biro black, as I wince with memory and resignation.
I know I should have done more, but it wouldn’t have saved her life. Her time had come, and, in her own strange way, she was ready while I was merely imprisoned. She’d done life, heralded in a new generation, seen out her own, and was now balanced on the precipice of new adventures which I couldn’t yet join.
So, she went and left me floundering. The only mother I had, and there wouldn’t be any more, and I’d left her alone to wonder when I’d gone for walks inside my head to remove myself from the now. Living another life and not living another life. Taking myself to places from where I could perchance to dream, whilst staring hard at the darkness of living room carpet and wishing it to take me in a swirl. Now she, a loathsome loadstone fast around my neck, designed in gilt, one which lost its sparkle an age ago and only reflected the past. Those lives I’d almost had, but hadn’t. She’d tied me to her, and I’d succumbed, knowing little else except for service; her service. And so, I sit in solitude, in lone reflection and wonder how I might have made things better, knowing that time is gone, disappeared into some dark and dusty recess, playing only in underwater shallows while glittering with enticement of things that could have been if I’d been a different person.
NOTE:
Based on the Prompt – The Weight We Carry
- That Summer - July 6, 2026
- The Loadstone - June 7, 2026
- Those Castles in The Air - May 3, 2026
