Eavesdropping

They argued in the office supplies store: Mother and young Daughter, bickering over the material needed for the upcoming school term. In the past I would have ignored the scene, but today, out of an odd compulsion, I briefly trailed behind, listening to the pitch of their sentences, the emotional weaving of the argument over money and appearances. The whole scene played out into my future, a newsreel of familial melodrama with the Son insisting, the Father stoic and resistant. Something inside left me feeling fractured. Splintered.