Your Unfinished Future

The museum has finished with you for tonight.

You leave here declining something without ever raising your voice, with your weekend still unspent, and with more room around you than the corridor promised. You also go out visited by friends who leave no weather behind, known by something that cannot quite place your name, and answered by a life you decided not to live. And you walk on with a line still open behind you.

The Civic Time Expansion Era expects you back. It is still holding a day with your name on it and no year to put it in.

The Domestic Weather Memory Era files your future under shelter. Expect rain indoors, and a voice calling you in before the thunder.

The Counterfactual Communications Boom keeps your line open. Somewhere a receiver is warm, and nobody in that kitchen has hung up.

Keep the ticket. None of these futures arrived, and one of them is now yours.