welcome, readers & writers
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hope you've had a good week and that your weekend plans are shaping up nicely. how about a writing warm up for you writers out there? poem, short story or creative non-fiction response to today's photo prompt, just click on comments below to send it in. see below for my short story spin on the photo. readers, the comments section is open to you as well. thanks for stopping in!
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Lil is taking her boys and leaving for the holiday. Leaving me here, in their wreck of a house. Alone. I know I should be happy for her, finding someone to love after so many years on her own. I know I have no claim on her and the boys, no reason to be resentful. I'm just a boarder. And a friend. But first a boarder. I mean, I always pay my rent on the first of the month, if not a day early. Don't I? I keep my belongings contained in my room, and my food on my shelf in the fridge. I take care that nothing spill over because if it did I might never find it again.
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When I can no longer hear their car on the street, I jump up from my place on the couch and peek out the window to be sure they're gone. I giggle and my breath warms the moisture on the window, causing two drops to race to the windowsill. I flip on the TV, clicking through all the channels until I find the family Christmas movie channel. It's a marathon of movies today, which is good. A mess like this will take hours to conquer.
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And it does. Not only picking up the clutter and carrying it away to the bedrooms, trying hard to guess to which boy each thing belongs. But the trash. And layer upon layer of dust and dirt and the gritty dry puddles of spills never quite cleaned up all the way. At last, when I look around and feel I'm in another house altogether, I go to the garage and dig through their Christmas bins. They hadn't bothered since they knew they'd be leaving. I find a tabletop tree, the kind with the lights wired into it and the ornaments glued on it. I plug it in and take a seat. It's well past nine.
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Too tired to think of cooking, I pull on my coat and go for fast food, bringing it back to the couch to inhale it. The Coke is so cold it's almost frozen. The lights on the little tree are blinking. McCauley Caulkin is hugging his mother. Another movie will begin soon. I sigh and cuddle up in the chenille blanket I'd found, and washed, and arranged with care on the back of the couch. It's not until I drag the final crusty french fry through the last streaks of the ketchup on my plate that my heart misses a beat. I sit up and look around. She's going to hate that I did this. This will not feel like a gift to her. It will feel like judgment.
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"But what am I supposed to do?" I say to the scrolling credits. "Put it all back?" I seriously consider the possibility, then dismiss it. It will have to be my gift to myself. A clean room in which to spend Christmas alone. I prepare myself for the likelihood that she won't say thank you.
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And she never does. She never says a word.
