#TWFT52 Prompt 2: The Word for This is "SENSE"

A child who Knew Things,

who saw a crone’s face

iridescent in a doorknob (they didn’t

believe) warning me of Him;

asked

about the red building around the

next bend of a

road not yet visited (how

did she know?);

predicted the moment (does it

light up?) when monuments

illuminated at twilight.

[Additional thoughts to spark your writing: Which definition of the word came to mind? How does the physical world around you affect your healing? What do you wish others knew about you without having to explain?]

As many youngsters do, I had countless extrasensory and telepathic experiences. No poltergeists, no angry voices. I simply remember knowing things I had no way to know (I still do). As is often the case, adults explained away, to suit their comfort.

Three memories, working backwards:

I was 10, a DC weekend. The Mall, periwinkle sky, the obelisk of the Washington Monument; I felt its connection between earth and sky. Skeptical: “Does this thing light up at night?” The split second after, a whoosh of energy, floodlights. Even today my father marvels at my timing; I never told them what else I saw: a vortex of energy, particles streaming up and out, around and down, back up through this divining rod they insisted was solid concrete. I knew about the billions of tiny pockets of space in cement, knew that things happened in there.

Age 6, driving to visit relatives I barely knew. “There’s a big red building on the left.” My father at the wheel, a brief exchange, the bend in the road, the structure in question. We’d never taken that route before.

And age 3. The bath off the kitchen, flocked wallpaper, door directly in front of the toilet. Mid-morning, mind wandering, the brass doorknob morphs to a wizened face, colors like the oil slick on the driveway after the rain. The words I tried to tell my mother as she stood at the kitchen sink: “Grandpa is No.” I couldn’t convince her I’d been wide awake; I didn’t try for long.

Maybe the crone was me, decades from now, when energy leaves this body, another time and space, wherever, whenever I’m supposed to be.