Being the Couch (400)

It is time, I think, watching the spot on the wall that I watch and sometimes practice not watching. It is time for her to come home. I feel grateful to face the clock, that I can know when to expect her through the door with the whoosh of air that would give me goose-flesh if I were fragile, the way she is. But my fabric is thick and stuffed. I am always warm.

She is late and I wait. I feel jealous of the bus and the dirty seats where she sits, one leg tossed carelessly over the other, her nose in a book and headphones nestled in her ears. I can’t help feeling jealous; I am alone, and I am hers; they are plastic flat seats of a common bus, with constant company.

Anticipation is torture. My fabric is tense in expectation, as when she sneezes and I imagine her staying home all week, away from work, near me all day between soup and juices and dozing naps. I know she prefers sleeping with me anyway, that I am more comfortable, more informal than the austerity of bed.

What terror it is, this stale loneliness. The room is claustrophobic. The air is dead and still. The clock ticks and I practice looking away now, because I am anxious. I would wish for a cat, but then, well – how does the adage go? “Be careful what you wish for…or something?”

Lord, now I’m talking to an empty apartment. The stools are hardly companions, so polished and unfriendly.

I fantasize a party; imagining her friends arriving and the wine, the crackers, all those sprawling people to sit here and sink into me. It grows late and I know I am fantasizing, but I can’t stop until whoosh, the door opens, and there is laughter. She is here.

With someone else – a man; I smell his cologne. One for company – at this time – is, well, nice I suppose, but probably I am being generous because she is here and I am happy and the soft air is washing over me.

They stumble across the living room, and she collapses onto me, pulling him along. I feel the voyeur; pleased and disgusted, but pleased yet. And I enfold them because I have to and I want to, because they are here and this is my duty, in all my yielding loyalty.

This post was written in response to a prompt by Write on Edge, which asked us to personify an object in 400 words or less.

Sheryl (Essay Reject #2)

We didn’t need to remember a house number. Sheryl’s yard is like the best piece of jewelry on the street, the lawn studded with wildflower stems popping through the snow. A horse blanket is flopped over the gate. When I got to the door, it was already opening and Buttercup the pug was snuffling up on me, while Sheryl and Bob ushered me in.

Sheryl is Montana’s newest Poet Laureate. You are my daughter, she told me on this visit, writing a note on her most recent book and insisting it into my hands. Then she said, I’m sick, otherwise I would cover you with kisses and pull your hair. She showed me necklaces she was making for an upcoming show, and looped one with colored glass beads around my neck. It’s called Flying Whimsy. Every time I see her, it is like this; a whirlwind of giving.

There is no doubt Sheryl is unusual. She is the person who roots always for the underdog. She turns children into poets – really – even the ones who sit in the back, who cross their arms or glare and refuse to participate in the exuberant examples of how to write poems involving Mike Tyson, her cat without an eye, and her husband Bob the Fireman. Later, these will become the most dedicated writers, awaiting her weekly arrival like puppies left at home.

You would probably not expect Sheryl if you were going to meet a state’s Poet Laureate, but very quickly, you would begin to see why she is so deserving of this title. Her presence explodes around you. Soon, you want to tell her every secret because you know not only that she drinks Peach Snapple and rescues dogs, but also that her life has not been easy, either.

To me, Sheryl is a reminder of the way I want to be in the world. Whatever I may do, whatever may matter to me most, if I do my work with honesty and passion, good will come, whether or not it was just what I was expecting.

Look (200)

Looking Up (this image is provided by Madison Woods, the original fabulous Fictioneer of Fridays)

The boy understood what it meant to look up.

And down, too.

He was a person who worked hard – when he remembered – and had profound thoughts – when he was caught off guard.

On Sunday mornings, he disappeared and though we looked, it was never until late, when he chose to reappear, that he would be found. I don’t know why I decided to follow him. Maybe I was tired of the gaze that saw everything but me.

So I followed him out, over the still-wet grass, past the bunkhouse and the willow-lined irrigation ditch turned creek bed. He pulled a bike from between bales and rode over the hill on tracks made by pick-ups and tractors. Out there, those tracks and haystack are reminders that we marked this place, that it is not wild, really.

I followed discreetly, though he probably knew all along I was there. We passed the pond and dipped down along the other side of it, and he disappeared into another stand of trees – quaking aspen, I thought, cottonwood. I waited.

He called me, then. Jules, come see!

I went; found him on his back, eyes on the brightening sky.

Look through the leaves, he said.

Photo Number 2, double inspiration.

For more stories prompted by these images, visit Madison Woods and explore the rest of the Friday Fictioneers! 

Frightening Mass Text Message from a Family Member

“I have decided to join a nudist colony. To be honest, it has simply become clear to me that I need to be naked all. the. time — in order to be fulfilled. Please visit. Love, Grandpa.”

For scarier text messages, check out the prompt from Write on Edge.