Foreign Country

A foreign country The flat was on the third floor, three flights of wooden stairs deep groves from generation of people walking up and down. In the living room I sat down. Had been away for long no one at home. The autumn wind blew, the house swayed and creaked like an old schooner meeting the Atlantic swells. A simple living room, a few family pictures and an amateur painting of a row boat in a fjord, boathouse, blue sky and sea, a far hazy silhouette of a mountain range. The painting was ominous by its deadness. I got up went down the same stairs; I had entered, the past and those I knew had gone.