What do you see?

I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers but hold up a ship.

Michelle Williams

I stare at the poster.

Another thought slips in through the periphery of my memory as thoughts so often do. Even my thoughts are like water – always slipping through and splattering about. Swirling and swishing around, diluting every other thought, building into a gurgling stream with a mind of its own. But back to that other thought. It’s the line from the movie where she compares love with water. How when we let it slip into us it can fill us up and become a powerful force. Powerful enough to hold up a ship perhaps. But in my life love seems to slip in and slip out with equal ease, never staying long enough to fill me up. Then I think maybe the poster talks about wanting to be free and strong. I am not strong. I do not want to slip through his fingers. I want him to need me like water. Like a parched man in a desert needs water. I want to flow into him and fill him up. I know that doc is going to say that it is not healthy. How can wanting to be needed not be healthy. Didn’t Bruce Lee say something about being like water too? A lot of people loved Bruce Lee. A lot of people probably love Michelle Williams. She’s not a sieve like me.

The doctor clears his throat to pull me out of my thoughts.

I do not know what the quote is saying. But I know what he wants to hear. It is always best to tell the doctors what they want to hear.

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt.

I Called It Love…

I did everything you wanted; gave you my love, loyalty, my best.

Then the world came along to demean me, ‘Ah, what a well-trained pet,’ they said.

That didn’t really bother me, until you turned around and acknowledged, ‘O Yes.’

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In response to Sonya’s Three Line Tales: Week 142 challenge, based on a photo by Wyatt Ryan via Unsplash

Annie’s

I watch him watch me from the corner of my eyes.
He thinks I don’t see the subtle shake of his head, the disappointment in his eyes.

‘She’s cleaning those shells again,’ he whispers. Probably complaining to Dr. D!
Bless the good doctor. If it wasn’t for her, they would have tried to take these away too. She’s good people. She understands a mother’s responsibilities. When Annie comes back, she’s going to ask for her shells. They may say that she’s never coming back. But I know better. She never goes anywhere without her shells.

Oh Lordy, I missed a spot.

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In response to Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneer’s challenge based on a photo prompt submitted by Sandra Crook

Read the Sign

If you woke up to bawling kids, a sink full of soiled dishes and a strew of beer bottles…

If the fridge was empty, your entire closet in the laundry, and the cable cut due to unpaid bills…

If I walked out and never looked back, would you notice me then?

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In response to The Three Line Tales: Week 140 challenge based on a photo by Ernest Brillo via Unsplash

Half an Hour

It’s a half hour drive.

Three weeks back I couldn’t reach fast enough. Today I wish the road would go on and on.

It’s a good thing that I know this route like the back of my palm, because today I’m not really looking. The water before my eyes is my own tears. The sound of the waves is drowned out by the crashing of my soul.

A heart doesn’t snap like brittle twig or burst like an overfilled balloon. A heart breaks in the heaving waves of the realization that it is entering a new reality. There’s a part of it that has to die so that the rest can carry on with its duties to the other people you love.

With no immediate decisions to take, no one to console, no one to be strong for, I give in to the enormity of my grief. Expel the breath that I did not even realise I had been holding in all along. Acknowledge my hopelessness, my shame, accept my helplessness.

Half an hour is all I have to break and rebuild my self again.

Half an hour is all I have between saying “Thank you doctor,” and “Mama, we stopped the ventilator.”

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In response to a photo posted as the Sunday Photo Fiction prompt of Sep 23 2018.
Photo Credit: Anurag Bakhshi

Standing at the foot of heaven

Dreams are broken and dreams dreamt anew.

He promised me the world, he promised me the heavens.

Now the heaven is his, and his world within me.

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In response to Week 136 of Three Line Tales, based on a photo by Tyler Nix via Unsplash

For Morning Must Break …

The world is silent, as if it ended in the night.

Tinted sunlight flows in through the gaps between the trees, washing away the tainted gray, awakening the greens and browns.

She sits upon the cold metal bench, soaking up the morning dew, waiting, knowing, dreading…

Morning spears through the abyss, like diamonds dancing a macabre dance upon the shadowed stones. Her fingers push heavenwards, trying to stop the sun, but the heartless devil continues to rise like any other day.

She watches helplessly as the excruciatingly words emerge.

Susan Ann Marie
Beloved angel
Budded on earth
To bloom in heaven
2008 – 2018

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In response to Priceless Joy‘s 181st Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers challenge, prompted by a photo by Jodi McKinney

Once

I watch them ride by, flushed with life. Up and down the hills they go, speeding past the world.

I try to imagine the wind lashing their face with mirth while the cold makes their noses red.

My hometown was always hot and dusty, and yet we enjoyed racing through the fields. It didn’t matter that our stomachs were empty or that the stones pricked our bare feet. For those few moments were were kings of our own world. Laughing and sprinting on our own terms. We were free.

I go back to mowing the lawn. The memories are fading and the weeds keep growing.

My stomach may no longer be empty, but my heart sure is.

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In response to The Sunday Photo Fiction Challenge of July 22, 2018, based on a photo by C E Ayr.

The passenger

The sound of the ignition firing threatens to tear out my heart, but I don’t look back.
Maybe I’m taking the coward’s route. Maybe running away from the past and shutting down the memories is not the solution. But for today it will do. Let me first survive the weight of today.

Joy, laughter, excitement- these emotions are dead to me. The world’s mirth appears to mock me. I blare the radio and accelerate in my attempt to get away. But the ghost of my past sits firmly in my rear seat, his vacant eyes frozen on me.

In response to the Friday Fictioneers – 13 July 2018 challenge, based on a photo by Liz Young

Class of 2012

People, so many people, students, parents, all with dreams in their eyes and hope in their hearts. A milestone reached, a journey embarked upon.
Their joy rises up like a tide engulfing me. I begin to smile.

A gentle hand on my shoulder. Principal Johnson. He always finds me.
‘Mrs. Mason, why do you do this to yourself?’

‘A reminder of the last happy day of my life,’ I think.

Six years ago my Tommy was valedictorian.
Then there was the after party. ‘Don’t wait up mum, I’ll probably be late.’ he had warned.
He should know better. Mothers always wait up.

I’m still waiting.

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In response to the 100 Word Wednesday : Week 75 challenge based on a photo prompt by Bikurgurl