Born again
02 September 2011 05:47 AM Categories: Writing prompts | Best of the blog
I tossed one leg over the other. The hanging foot twitched and bounced. I knit my fingers together and took them apart, knit together and took apart, and when that was no longer satisfying, I tapped my fingernails against themselves, hid one set under the other. My hands were one creature, my arms connected, they would never separate, would never open up for another again.
I distracted myself with thoughts of sex, of fields at night, the trembling under a fitful breeze. Every landscape was dark, the sun gone, but the moon made shadows of trees on the ground. The stars twinkled. Every cliché about light in the dark came true, and I didn’t know who was beside me and I didn’t care. The glow from his cigarette hung in the dark. I knew the other end touched his lips, the lips that didn’t let words out, that caressed the edge of wine glasses and pecked me on the cheek in the morning. He turned his head to the side and removed the cigarette, the glow moving with him.
I knew his hands once, the long thumbs, the thin fingers and broad palms. What was it about men’s hands? I used to watch him write letters on Sunday afternoons. I glimpsed his fingertips as they held the newspaper or tapped out email. I reached for those hands, he reached for mine, but now there was no familiarity. I had taken to looking at the hands of strangers, the men at the coffee shop grabbing distractedly at sheathed paper cups, the guys on the street clutching cell phones or holding the looped ends of dog leashes.
He extinguished the spark and said goodnight, his footsteps crunching up the dune. Waves returned to the beach again and again and again. I buried my feet in the cool sand and closed my eyes against the murky dark, imagined a man who spoke, who knew how to use his hands. I conjured him up from dream and memory, and in my mind we walked along the edge of water, talking, never stopping. There was no barrier and the words were born, they lived and died and were born again.
From the prompt "Pregnant," which is almost as bad as "A baby."
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. Unless I tell you otherwise, this is the original 12-minute prompt edited only for clarity and typos.
I dreamed last night about planes and crash landings, about people holding blowtorches to boxes of raw popcorn in order to cook them in the heat. Small explosions and runways carved out of dirt: what does it mean?
Image by ElvertBarnes.
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