Two rooms
25 August 2011 06:57 AM Categories: Writing prompts | Fiction
Wood is complicated. Warm. It is direct, sure of itself, with no need to put layers of paint between it and the world. She rubs her hands across it for comfort and reassurance. A circular oak table, the type with clawed feet at the end of its curvaceous legs, a walnut roll-top desk battered with age and use, a birdseye maple vanity with its mottled grain, remind her of a man who knew what he was doing. He wielded saws and hammers and drills, coaxed rounded shapes out of flat boards with attention – the lathe, the sander, his calloused hand intimate with chisel and splinter. She swept the sawdust out of his woodshop, saved it for the creation of flame, tossed it in the compost, breathed in the sharp rich scent of life that permeated the room.
There is no wood in this room, or at least none that hasn’t been choked out by paint. Everything is glossy, her thoughts bounce off the surfaces and back to her, mangled on the return, emphasizing her aloneness, her single quality in the emptiness, the only other living thing to exist.
The man was strong. He used to carry her high above his head and twirl her around. She protested, as anyone would, as she giggled. She couldn't stop. The confusion between yes and no was forged here, along with the paradoxical nature of the tickle, the way being pinned and tortured had an element of pleasure to it. Still, she turned off her skin. She stopped feeling the sensations. She locked herself inside her head, made the room with warm wood furniture and soft dark fabrics.
It is a comfortable mind, a retreat, a place where a fire burns contained in an open brick sarcophagus, chaos in a box. She sits in the overstuffed chair with a cat on her lap and another beside. The dog snores in his corner. People don't give animals credit for having emotional lives, she thinks. It's not as simple as dumb love and loyalty, and in her head she can acknowledge that, be open to it all, to the differences outside her perceptions.
She pages through a book of photographs from the past and watches the people come alive. She runs a cool hand up and down the inside of her arm until the goosebumps start. She closes her eyes as the fire crackles and the sun streams through a closed window. Outside there is weather. The trees struggle silently against the wind. Dead leaves dance across streets. Unsecured doors swing open and closed again and couples fight in person, on cell phones. They have silent conversations, the words felt rather than heard, and hold hands across great divides. She sits. The fire accepts her handfuls of sawdust, her sacrificial logs. In another room, cold and hard and bright, the other part of her waits in chilly silence.
From the prompt "Minimalistic." I wanted to call this post "Fuck Minimalism," more because I am in a foul mood than for any other reason, but that didn't seem appropriate.
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. This one took a lot of editing, in part because I am tired. Nora-dog chuffed in the stairwell at 12:30 a.m. I finally went downstairs with her to see if there was anything to chuff about and opened the door to the back room where Nick the cat was mysteriously sitting (it's a no-cats-allowed room, for good reason). I evicted him before going upstairs. Then my brain raced here and there and THEN a car horn, constant and sharp, faded in and out of the bedroom until it finally stopped. I got back to sleep somewhere in the 3 a.m. hour and was up again by 5:20. I'm so tired that I am going on and on about this. And because no one in the house is up yet, anyone who has gotten this far in this long and boring paragraph might be among the first to know about my night.
Image by geoffbarrattgeoff.
blog comments powered by Disqus