Concerning Packing

   Friday, April the Ninth. Rain was flushing worms from beneath the sidewalk and coldly drowning them in puddles.
  Kevin realized with detached bemusement that he didn’t care about anything in the house enough to take it with him and skipped packing. Changed his mind when he got downstairs and, for reason unclear, grabbed a kitchen knife. Michael Meyers style, still in its cardboard sheath, a condensed homage to the meticulousness of his mother. He looked through the hallway into the living room, where he could see the top of her head and protruding feet asleep on the couch. Despite being close to the flickering gas fireplace, she had an afghan pulled around her shoulders, half draped on the floor.
  Some tentative emotion, a tobacco smoke wisp lingering but for a moment, rippled through his soul like a pebble thrown into a pool. It was an incongruous sense of affection. He had never really felt that he loved his mother; she was a sort of necessary character, background, neither Yin nor Yang, and Love was a word his dictionary couldn’t explain. To be honest, he never felt that he knew her.
  Then the knife felt real in his hand again. His eyes focused on the blade, and with a deliberate movement he slid it beneath his coat and slipped quietly out the door.