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Today's poem or short story prompt is "friend".
Margaret awoke, went into the streets. They were ordinary college town streets, not city streets, and she walked out not disheveled, in nightclothes and bare feet, but properly shod and sufficiently covered for (a) following the dog to a poop spot on dewy ground or (b) being witnessed by anomalously stirring neighbors or other passers by, but really how many passers by are there in the night where Margaret lives? Few. Very few. So Margaret awoke, and on awakening went into the streets, not like in a movie, nor in poetically appropriate detail, but into the streets no less, with the dog, and the poop, and the shoes, and in her mind over and over “she is no friend to me,” over and over almost until she could believe it. But not quite. Not quite, even though she knew it was true.
ReplyDeleteAt approximately repetition number 23, or 27, more or less or in the middle, the phrase began to fade, no less shocking exactly but fading nonetheless. It faded and the grass appeared greener; it faded though it was every bit as true as ever, and no less necessary, no less urgent for Margaret to grip. The dog gets easier to hold on the leash. The news, always news, of the dear one revealed to be no friend, this gets no easier to hold. But even to hold how hard it is to hold is hard itself to hold.
Margaret has turned back now. The dog is ready for the comforts of home. There is night remaining. The bed will not be comfort. Only the unconsciousness, which won’t restore the spirit. No matter how deep and how thorough the sleep, the morning will be, at best, bittersweet, with its wakeful difficult open eyes, staring over and over at what the mind still must recite several score times more, and then some.
--LisaLou
Nice, it evokes such a strong mood. Half awake, half asleep, not desperate, not hoping. I want to try something like this.
DeleteREALLY? YOU DON'T?
ReplyDeleteTRY THIS:
LIST YOUR FRIENDS
Maybe there was something about the pen
or the paper
or the weather
or the afternoon, the heat
and the Michigan humidity
like standing in the laundromat
while they stream press slacks
that I didn't buy
because they weren't pleated.
Maybe it was the challenge
simpler than a card game
more interesting
than a football game
and certainly
less dangerous than either
at least in some ways
Mike Fedel
July, 2013
FYI:
ReplyDeleteREJECTED ENDING from a draft:
I wrote the list.
It wasn't blank.
Now, I need to call some of these people.