Thunder wasn’t always a sign of a reckoning, but these days everything seemed to be moving in reverse; like the moon had started walking on its hands and the sun decided to run towards it. Don’t get me wrong, thunder has always meant something around here, but it used to mean the usual things; like a storm brewing or God chastising. Now, it means something else entirely.

It started after all the color left, and in retrospect, that should have been a clue. The world doesn’t just go black and white one day and not mean something bad. Funny thing was, no one noticed. I mean, maybe one or two birds caught on, realized something was off and started flying in the wrong direction.

Actually, come to think of it a bird crashed into our window that morning. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice that the grass was suddenly grey and the trees where charcoal because I was too worried about the poor little dove with the broken neck—then again who’s to say it was even a dove at all? It was white but without color it could have been a rat.

That was the first change, the second came a few days later. A man walked into my kitchen, sat down at the table and told me he was my husband. I knew I had a husband but, in that moment, I couldn’t remember who that was. So the man stayed. It appeared this type of thing was happening all over town; the bakery suddenly had a new baker, the checkout girl at the grocery store was different. My friends all seemed to have traded faces with one another.

I seemed to have traded faces with someone. That night I looked in the mirror and screamed, the man came to help me, but I didn’t tell him because this just seemed to be how things were now. The new normal.

The third thing–and you know what they say about things happening in three’s–was when they started to take things from me. Not just things either. It started with my car keys, then my wallet. Then they took my house and moved it around somewhere else, so I couldn’t find it anymore, but that wasn’t the worst thing.

The worst thing was when they took away my time. When they rushed everything forward too fast, when they turned my baby into a full-grown man who had his own babies. When they took away my parents and hid them underground.

The thunder started shortly after that, that’s how I know the reckoning is coming. And in a way, I am excited, because this strange woman, who keeps telling me she is my daughter–even though I am too young to have any kids–took me to a new apartment and left me there. So, I wait by the window in this unfamiliar room, surrounded by photos of strangers with lies attached to them, trying to trick me into believing they are my family and that I am old. And I wait for the thunder to bring the reckoning with it; a big old tornado, to rip this town apart, to tear what is left of my life to pieces so that maybe it will go back to normal. So that maybe I will be able to remember my own name.

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Ashleigh Gryzko is a quixotic little bird with a penchant for red wine fueled writing sessions and one sentence bio’s, because less is more. Read more here: quixoticardor.com 

Photo: Marc-Olivier Jodoin