PASSING
Word Count: 228
The rooster cracks open the dawn for the crows to fly through. Their gravelly caws like a blunt knife serrating the sky into clouds. The sparrows have fled the nest and I’ve missed their leaving; another empty hole in my life. He’s been gone three days.
Both hands steady a cup of milky cold coffee. Between refills I don’t bother washing it out. It is a constant in a world of changes. The one thing I can depend on to be here tomorrow while yesterday is still there with a drip down the side, sip-marks, a ring where it sat for an hour alone. He’s been dead five days.
Same rooster, same crows hacking away at the morning. I sit on the backstep hunched and tight, my bathrobe tucked in around flesh I’ve seen is no match for time. I search the black holes in the treeline for bears. For something. Something.
I’ve been widowed a week now. Each day rolls out the same way. Except for the single plate in the sink, both cars silent and waiting in the garage, rotting lettuce in the refrigerator, no goodnight kiss, you wouldn’t see anything wrong.
That’s not right. He was a big man, a kind man, the love of my life. When he left, I expected a hole torn into the sky that a jet could fly through.
wow, susan, just wow. you had me from the first line and it never let up. so very very dense, like a song. i like how you return to the first image in the last line but having homed in on the man. the greatest tension between the end of the 3rd and the 4th paragraph. just wonderful. … hey, just 10 more days and i can’t believe how many times i’ve come close to quitting this … and next week i’m teaching double shifts (summer school) so i expect to fully and irreversibly lose my mind unless i can write 7 stories on the w/e ahead of time. but i also have to write a paper…aarrgh.
Thank you, Marcus. I do like this one a lot and have asterisked it in my files for submission some day when I get the time. What do you mean “just 10 more days”? That’d only mean 50 and this is the 100 day project, dear man. You know, take some pressure off yourself so that you can continue and don’t get near to a quitting frame of mind: 1) Write just one sentence, for from a writer such as you, one single sentence is often as filling as it is delicious. 2) Do write a few ahead but leave them in a folder to be dipped into just when you’re at your wit’s end. 3) Refrain from Facebook and twitter and heralding the work of others unless your own has been done, your school work complete, and you’ve spare time on your hands. 4) Let Lucia cover for you now and then with a single piece of her art. There now, Susan has spoken.
yes, of course, another 60 days, i think i meant to say “only 10 more until half-term” of this project. your advice is well taken. or at least i’ll try to take it. enrolled the wife into the project, too, today, so there will be more from this family…and less from me over time. i still don’t see why i would submit again. i am not in a submitting frame of mind but instead in a novel-writing one. you’re very kind to slip in that stuff about me as a writer—and on your own wall! but it takes one to know one i say. just read this piece of yours again…it’s a bright child, this one. i don’t know about you but when i’ve birthed one of them, i’m exhausted for a day or two. cheers!
Very powerful without being too heavy handed. Really well done!
Thank you, Susan! I was just sitting outside looking around and wondering what if…
lovely, sad and curiously light in the sense of lightness that calvino talks about, the sort of quality i think we’re all after with these writing things a sense of hovering over something in a way that seems to allow the emotion room to magnify by allowing it room to move.
btw..i haven’t been thinking about the 100 days. i just do one at a time. my way of dealing with the constraint that is the pace is to not interact with the work other folk are doing as much as i would like. i have a few days off coming up so will see about altering the process.
ya…i wish i could do more interacting…i suppose it’ll happen. no days off for me for a while but towards august the sky will clear up. then i’ll probably get terribly tense: one advantage of this firing away at close range to a lot of other work is that my threshold for production is lowered which is good for production…
Thanks–Calvino’s one of my favorites. I’ve been writing one a day since January 1st so I’m on day #181 and wondering how the hell many people I have running around in my head waiting to tell their story. I don’t always interact with others; really depends on if something really moves me, or more likely, if after I’ve written something, I get that itchy feeling that I’ve seen it someplace before and desperately try to trace it back to make sure I’ve not stolen somebody’s idea and will then link to it.
you’re so original, susan, i don’t think anybody who inspired you would think anything else than “i inspired her”.