We are pleased to welcome back our guest writer, Heather Heyns! Heather was born and raised in the deserts of Southern California. She refuses to own hamsters after the first one hung itself, and her next set ate each other in a Survivor style massacre. She spends her time chasing children (usually her own), avoiding escalators, and what little is left she devotes to writing. She lives with her husband and her two children, which explains the dark nature of her writing. Her work can be found in Literary Orphans, Foliate Oak, and on Eat, Sleep Write.

Tomorrow

3/30/15

Tomorrow stalks me, a thief waiting for night. It sits, a mountain in the distance, larger than it seems, farther than it looks, more treacherous than its tranquil facade appears. My mother kissed my head at bedtime and said tomorrow offered every opportunity, every hope, every adventure I might want.

Tomorrow hides the pilfered goods in a sack, tucked beneath its arm, and spirits them away. While I sleep, lost in dreams of yesterday, it comes and steals time. It pulls away youth, tiny bits that add up, like sand into a beach, until I have nothing left. Every morning I rise to find the thief took another day, shoved me closer to an end I struggle to avoid. It carries off hopes, the things I promised I’d achieve. Education, a career, respect, the thief absconds with them. Everything I have and want vanishes into the thief’s sack.

The promises my mother said about tomorrow never come. It brings no opportunity, no hope, no adventure. It offers nothing to fill the void from what it steals. The morning will come when nothing surrounds me, when I wake, broken, kneeling, and alone, after tomorrow has stolen my future and my life is nothing but the past. Tomorrow stalks me, a thief waiting for night.

Heather

To read our other letters, please click on The Path!