welcome, readers & writers! writers, please join me in writing about my photo above, a covered patio along the riverwalk in san antonio. just click on comments below to share your poem, short story or creative non-fiction response to the prompt. i love to read your work. readers, thank you for time and interest; comments are open to you, as well. happy weekend to all ;-)
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5.7.5.
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shade and bright divvy
space in me. dancing, shifting,
complimentary
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I don’t want to be here at all. I knew I shouldn’t have come. I’m not in the mood to be dealing with all this. Stupid pointless questions about nothing and silly chit chat. Why did I agree to come here? I knew it was going to be rubbish. Oh who am I kidding?, I know exactly why I am here. Helen asked me. I am here because of beautiful Helen. What did I think would happen? Helen is way out of my league but she is the most beautiful person I know. I am such a fool to have allowed myself even consider the remotest possibility that she asked me here because she likes me. I mean just look, she is surrounded by all those handsome men, smiling. That smile. You find yourself immediately analysing everything you just said and did after eliciting that smile, memorising what you did and said so you can try to create that smile again. I should really talk to people. If she sees me just standing here I’ll look like such a saddo. But everyone seems to be busy chatting. I can’t just barge into someone else’s conversation. It would be weird. And there is no way I can compete with those Adonis’s talking to Helen. I would look too weak and insignificant next to them. I should just go. I’ll lie tomorrow and tell her I was sick. Oh wait....she’s coming over to me, smiling. I’ll stay for a little bit more.
ReplyDeleteAnother S.A. pic -- nice! TG and I concluded our first date with a stroll along the Riverwalk. :)
ReplyDeleteIn between the shadows and the light she plays. Sometimes she stands still, looks down at her bare arms and legs and marvels at the stripes - maybe she'd be a tiger, or a zebra, and then she moves her arm and watches the ripples.
ReplyDeleteDanielle would visit this spot fifty years later and stand, bare legged, bare armed, and watch the ripples across aged skin. The time had been but a minute, just a tiny minute, just a little bit of a minute.
Enjoying these!
ReplyDeleteThe plot lines don't converge. I knew exactly how they'd meet fifty-seven weeks ago when I began. There was the victim, introduced in such a fashion everyone would have wanted to kill her. There was the unintended additional victim, victim by victimhood, killed because he knew something he didn't know it was dangerous to know. I knew it all so well back then. Then there was the murderer, carefully rising to the readers awareness in a comfortably sympathetic manner, beyond suspicion, so far beyond suspicion the word would never cross the reader's mind. Rejected as suspicious out of hand. Was that too suspicious? No, there were several others equally beyond reproach. This one no more nor less potentially culpable than any of the others and the reader would want to like this one, too.
ReplyDeleteBut then, of course, as life and fiction happen, the damned victim number one became softened by the natural human tendency to be whittled down to natural humanity. No one could be so bad and not be killed right away, and the longer that victim lived the closer the reader wanted to get, the more fathom the demons driving both whomever did the murder and especially this now poor victim, who after all had reasons understandable for the behavior the rest of the characters deplored.
Then the tie-in with the second victim and the bizarre circumstances of his life, the kinds of people he knew, the fragile association with victim number two, who was, indeed, the principle victim of the book.
And how to cover the murderer, reveal the immense motivation.
I was stuck.
A quick flight to Merida. A few bucks I could not afford to luxuriate in the Mexican sun, bike out to Uxmal and Kabah, let only Mayan culture occupy my mind, sit under the clever slatted roof over the dirt floored patio and eat food unavailable in the States. Return refreshed. I know I can weave these strains together now, I'm ready to work again.
Naomi and I are having iced coffee in the shade. My back is to Isabelle, (my belle) who has escaped from the chair next to me and my attention. Isabelle makes Naomi nervous so I know she won’t disappear or wander far before Naomi taps me on the shoulder and points. It’s one of the things I tolerate in Naomi. Naomi has no children and thinks I should spend every minute watching my belle, watching her sit, watching her stand, watching her eat, watching her walk, watching her grasping at shadows, arms flailing and falling down. A person can only watch so much. I am telling Naomi about my color scheme for the bathroom remodel, my inability to choose between a dark brown or white cabinet. I tell her this because she will recommend and I will choose the opposite. It’s the way our friendship works. I point to my iced latte swirled with melting ice and say, “I like this color for the walls.” There it is: the tap on the table and the finger pointing past my left arm. I glance over my shoulder expecting to see Belle’s face planted in the dirt. But she is upright and, and dancing! My belle is dancing! She is hopping from sunlit piano key to sunlit piano key, forward on the dark keys, back on the bigger squares of light. Her sandals and toes are covered with dust and before long I know she will cry from the abrasiveness of sand under canvas straps. Life is like that. But for now, Belle swings.
ReplyDeleteDe Langer - Beautiful story about Beautiful Helen! Thank you for writing with me :)
ReplyDeleteLinda - I can totally imagine love blossoming along the riverwalk! What a lovely beginning to your (real life) story :)
Kat - Thank you for your kind words, and for writing with me. I love the image of Danielle in the same place as a girl and an older woman. The world does seem to spin so quickly as that! By the way, did you see my Kathryn with a K story? I was originally thinking of my grandmother - whose name is Catherine, but she changed the C to a K because she loves it better. But when I went to write it as a nickname - I realized that I know another fabulous, strong Kathryn - Kat who is Inspiring :)
Chuck - spooky! But I love the twist at the end and get a great mental image of you somewhere on the beach soaking up the sun and writing the ending to a great thriller. Thanks for writing with me!
Pauline - I love your San Antonio. Love Belle and Naomi and your narrator! Thanks for writing with me & Happy New Year :)
Lots of great stuff here. I am mostly without family experience, and it's heartening to find the drama in experiences so distant from my own memories.
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