Disappointment. We’ve all felt it. The moment breath leaves your heart once realization sets in.

I spent a whole day when I was six, cutting flowers with scissors way too sharp for me. Snip, snap and paddy wack. Throw in a pile and gather in my arms. Walk with scissors strung between my fingers, hanging open. Fresh and sweet, the colors smelled. Pink for mom, orange for dad. The rest for me and my brothers, only a tad. One, I’d give to the dog, tossed it at his feet.

Stare and stare and wait and tell him, “Get it, it’s yours.” But he just stared back at me, tongue out of his mouth, tail beating the ground.

I placed all seven flowers on the wood kitchen table. I dumped chunky milk from a cup I stored under the couch. Filled it with water and stuck each stem in the glass.

A step before disappointment, maybe annoyance, hit as the flowers refused to stay bunched and tight like they do in those magazines mom read when she was on the can.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Unlaced my shoe and tied the stems, best I could. Annoyance an emotion far from me now. A shriveled leaf. But you know, the next day I woke to wilted flowers. Total and utter disbelief.

“Mom, the flowers are dying!” I yelled through the house until her heavy feet hit the floor and ambled towards her little boys’ voice.

“Yeah, they do that.” It’s all she said. Patted my head. A kiss on my hair. The back of her dress tucked into her giant underwear.

Disappointment. Hit me like a rock to the jaw from when Tommy Warner a few houses down threw a rock instead of a snowball.

1. First annoyance. No spirits are near me. Nothing is really here. A passing face, maybe, on the horizon.

2. Disbelief. “Hello?” I’ve yelled and shouted until my voice was hoarse. Then whispered and muttered until the word distorted. Hello, hello, hello, hello. Sounds awful to say now, low.

3. Disappointment.

The mountain my dog sent me too, it’s closer now. The foot of it in sight. The top disappears into clouds. It’s been days, I think. Where the sun goes and when the night arrives, it’s an illusion of sorts. If I want it to be bright and sunny, then there she comes above the horizon. If I wish I found myself tired and sleepy like before I collapsed on the sidewalk. Before the angel took me to this place. The moon peeks into the sky.

If there is nothing here but me, then where, oh where will the dinosaurs be?