A photo fiction prompt from Alastair’s Photo Fiction:

She walked through the park, trying recover from the fight, trying to figure out how to return with her tail only slightly between her legs. Thoughts spun about her head like angry wasps. How could he be so insensitive? Her mother had only been dead seven months.

Then she saw the steps.

They led to a thick grove of trees at the park’s center. When you entered, the city faded behind you, commotion buffered by supple, green leaves. You could be anywhere. Her mother had taken her there many times, especially on hot summer days, when the temperature under the trees dropped to almost comfortable. They’d laid on a quilt, watching dappled sunlight through the waving branches. The memory slapped her with an open palm. Stinging.

She climbed the steps slowly, her legs working separate from her brain; she wasn’t sure her heart could take such a walk down memory her lane, but her body said, “Yes.”

And she followed the path, and she laid in that grove, and she shed tears backed up for far too long.