I wonder what life will be like out there after so long. Will I get more than one meal a day? What will it taste like? What strange new things will this world hold for me?

​

I walk out into the light, my eyes struggle to adjust to this new brightness. It is a completely different light from what I remember.

​

She's not here to pick me up. No one is. I'll have to walk into town. Maybe I can catch the bus home.

​

The bus stop: there it is. Beyond the old wooden benches, I see shops and restaurants once bustling with people. They are now boarded up and abandoned, like me. What happened while I was away?

​

The bus never comes to get me...I forgot its schedule, I guess. Nothing's the same. I walk to the home I once knew. I can see the paint on the outside is weathered, chipped, and worn. It's so quiet here, solitary, like the place I just came from. I can only hear my racing heartbeat as I walk up the front steps. There she is, the wife, waiting with closed arms, a weary smirk, and no big welcome. No hugs. No kiss. Why does she seem so afraid?

​

I'm not him anymore, can't she see that?

​

As I pass over the threshold, she backs away from me. She offers no eye contact. She lifts her arm and points up the stairs. "Your room is the one on the left. Dinner will be at 5:00 dailv." She savs it so matter-of-fact. We won't be sleeping together in the room we once shared so many years ago. That room, once filled with love, was to the right as I recall.

​

I climb the stairs, creak by creak. The room on the left was used for storage only, not for sleeping. It now has a single metal-frame bed with gray sheets, a wool blanket. One small window. Am I on probation in my new cell?

​

I am on my own again.