Why I've gathered you all here

11 June 2011 06:00 AM Categories: Writing prompts | Best of the blog

The secret history consists of impressions, what is left of night and cars too close, and nervousness about what is to come. No one can take it away, the association of literature and perfidy and excitement. The night was cool and I wasn’t wearing enough layers and by the time I got to the concrete structure, I was trembling. They mistook the trembles for fear, the kids with their pot smoke halos, the screaming couple (the girl in jeans like sausage casings, the boy with boxers on saggy display). Or, more likely, I took myself to be visible to them when it was a one-way mirror, me watching them, watching the clock, looking at the sky, the traffic, my shoes, the kids again.

I still walk, I wander the streets of Berkeley and Albany. I take in the flowers, the bungalows in various states of repair, stuccoed in purples and calming greens. This is my secret life, going from appointment to appointment, from therapist to counselor to doctor, observing the lives of others, their public faces. It's the slow way to travel, though I am a fast walker, and my mind records and remembers. Here is where I waited in the rain, my head filled with me, with friendly warnings for the coming earthquake, waiting for the car with my husband and son to whisk me away from the flood.

The sidewalks are empty and the houses silent. I wander during weekdays when the rest of the world is gathering cash and stress and knowledge and I go to my helpers, the people who prop me up and make me hopeful, like an old lady grasping the arms of youth, one on either side, as she attempts to make it up the hill.

I have dreams about children running away from me and lost pets, about clocks that don’t work and friends who tell me that they won’t invite me over. Last night, my heart trembling, I broke out in a sweat and dreamt of the end of the world by machine, the last of humanity stamped out by falling metal. I woke up from that, and from the next, an old friend in a ratty apartment by the ocean, the dangerous walk to her place from a bus stop. She’s a mother of two now, two southern babies that I’ve never met, and I’ve consigned her to the past, to memory, have kept her there like a fine piece of china, delicate and easily broken.

I’ve consigned you all to memory, I make up my mind again and again, keep you trapped here. You can’t talk unless I tell you to, and eventually you listen to my ramblings, to my explanations, the perfect imaginary audience.

From the prompt "Whispering."

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.

Image by striatic.

Tags: A prompt a day until the Round Robin goes away, writing prompt, walking, Round Robin, dreams, melancholy, memory, insomnia

blog comments powered by Disqus

blog »