timed traveler

Three people:
Mom, dad, son.
Visiting. At a coffee shop
near MIT where he is researching
time travel, which they still do there,
and,
if they don’t, they should.
They laugh and smile and
he tells them that he hasn’t yet decided
what to do about next fall, that he “needs
more time,”
which he really does have, if time
exists, as he thinks it does, in
unquantifiable, infinite segments.
What time is it, now, the father asks,
seriously?
“Yesterday,” the son says.
They laugh, again, some more.
They think he’s fooling, but
he isn’t.
To him, time isn’t a continuum,
it just is.
Did you start looking for another place,”
the mom asks?
“Yes,” he says. “I did. Tomorrow.”
More laughing.
The folks think he’s kidding, that he’s cute.
Tomorrow – or was it yesterday? – he will walk
into the same corner coffee shop and shoot six people dead.
Bang. Bang.
Bangbangbangbang.
“We had no idea,” the dad will tell the local
newspaper.
“No one did,” the mom will say. “He was a good boy.”