welcome, readers & writers! thank you for stopping by - and a good monday to you. i hope (for all of us!) that this week is filled with good things like productivity, peace, rest & play.
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writers, care to join me in a writing warm up on today's photo prompt? see below for my spin on it. if you'd like to share your short story, poem or creative non-fiction response, click on comments below. readers, comments are open to you as well!
Patrick wondered whether, if he made a personal donation, the construction company would fix this blasted fence. It disturbed him deeply to see these holes, so jagged, so unsanitary looking, as if the fence had been chewed through by a rodent; though he supposed that logically a rodent wouldn't be able to make such a big hole while hanging off the mesh with its scritchy little claws. These hole-y eye-sores threw his whole darn day off. If he didn't want to see them, he had to go a block out of his way to get to work. That meant leaving the house four and a half minutes early. That meant waking up at 5:56 instead of 6:00 a.m. And who could put in a productive work day knowing they'd been required to wake up in the five o'clock hour? So usually he'd go ahead and take the direct route, passing the fence while trying very hard to avert his eyes.
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When he'd phoned the borough office to ask how long construction on the sidewalk would last, they'd promised him it would only be another week or two. That was the day before Thanksgiving. Now his New Year was tarnished, the whole of January 2011 would forever, in his mind, be wobbly, or maybe warbled, or was it warped?
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This morning he couldn't help himself again. He looked. And then he looked again. The biggest gash, the upper one, had become a frame for the most beautiful woman he'd ever, ever seen. She was standing near the door, talking on her cell phone. He paused, secure behind the veil of green plastic mesh; thinking how, if she could see him, she might dismiss him as uninteresting. If she were to look at all, though, thanks to the fence, she'd only see his eye. Looking. Blinking. Thinking. Wondering. How long had he been standing here, anyway? Would he be late for work? And asking himself... would he look again tomorrow?
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Actually, Dem, it was your piece, as well as the photo, that prompted this. Different, of course.
ReplyDeleteIf I don't hang on to these bad feelings, this ill will, this loss of esteem, the nurture of these grudges; if I don't stop Them from speaking of things that upset me, things that remind me I have been misused, remind me how terrible people can be, thoughtless, unkind, deliberately mean, if I don't interrupt them as they're saying words I find offensive, make them as uncomfortable as they make me then these injustices that I must live with will not be answered, will not be atoned, will recur and recur and recur. He tells me I linger too often on these things, that I must come out into the rest of the world, hear music, watch television instead of looking at it, see the beauty of the horizon, the trees, the rainbows, go to plays, concerts, movies. He says I will see my life differently when I find other people have been hurt, taken advantage of, lied to, ripped off, sworn at, neglected, abused, laughed at then I'll see those things are part of everybody's life. When I see through the little holes, little holes in the wall I've surrounded myself with, I will see we all have sufferings. But I don't want to take my mind out of where it is, because I know here, here is easy, here is only hard memories, but out there it is hard, out there are experiences that make hard memories, don't I already have enough? Out there is happiness that will be crushed, dreams that will be shattered, love that will die, pleasure that will be cheated on, and here is safe, even though it is unpleasant it is the unpleasant that I already know, the unpleasant that I can live with, I don't want to live with anything bad happening again, I want to stay in this wall, this fence, where I'm safe. Alone and safe. And nothing touches me. Nothing hurts. What is it that's out there?
Chuck, I like this very much. It's a window into the mind and the heart of your narrator. Thank you for writing with me!
ReplyDeleteGreat post Dem! and Chuck too!
ReplyDelete