August 2024: Janet Muirhead Hill

“her bell tinkles”

Waking from a dream,  she wondered if the sound was coming from the lovely fairy she’d met in a luscious garden near a bubbling spring. Uh, no. She was awake now, yet the sound persisted. A door bell? In her groggy state she wasn’t even sure she had one. Then she remembered. She didn’t, but she wasn’t home. This bed was not her own, but the narrow one in her daughter’s guest room. Who would be at the door at this hour? Why didn’t her daughter answer it. She looked at the time on her phone, which she had slipped under her pillow. 10 am. Her daughter was at work. She was here by herself. How ironic. Because her daughter had said after the episode that took her to ER, “I don’t want you going home to your house. You’re all alone there.” Well, yeah. She got out of bed, straightened her pajamas and made it to the door. “Hi, I am the nurse your daughter hired to look after you. May I come in.” Oh that girl. She’s forgotten how much I enjoy my solitude.

Hill writes from her rural Montana home which she shares with her husband, two cats, and two ponies. She writes for the joy of writing as she learns about life and herself through the characters in her novels and in the random poetry she occasionally pens. www.janetmuirheadhill.com