The Inner Landscape of a Year

How have you grown? What are you leaving behind?

Camille Prairie
4 min readAug 3, 2023
Photo by Sharefaith

Bang! Hissssssssss.

I looked at the dog. She was sitting straight up on the floor of the office, where she spends her work week waiting for one of us to take her out to play or on a walk.

She was looking around for the source of the mysterious noises, confirming I wasn’t crazy. She sighed and laid her head back down. Hmm. Maybe I was crazy.

I knew what I had heard, so determined to find the source of this mysterious banging and hissing, I tentatively set off on a path from the office to our master bedroom. These two rooms sit on opposing ends of the house, so this path was the surefire way I had mapped out to identify the mysterious noise.

Sure enough, I made it to our bathroom. Well, more precisely, I made it to the threshold of our bathroom, where I peered into the looming darkness. Was there a stranger taking a shower in our bathroom?

That was the only viable explanation I could think of for the sound of running water emanating from the darkness of my bathroom. Feeling almost disembodied, I stepped forward and turned the light on, expecting someone to jump out, wielding a knife. Alas, I instead entered the Chamber of Secrets. *cut to every scene of Harry, Ron, and Hermione standing

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Camille Prairie
Camille Prairie

Written by Camille Prairie

NC-based freelance-writer and semi-functional 25 year old navigating what it means to be an adult. Find me at https://camilleprairie.co