Raggedy Paperback

I signed up to receive writing prompts in my email daily.  The purpose of the exercise is to accept the prompt and spend ten solid minutes, preferably by hand, on the subject.  I received my first challenge today, an effort on my part to keep sharp and to think on my toes.  These exercises are designed to be short bursts of joy, of straight writing, without editing, without research, without hesitation.

My first one was to write about a raggedy paperback, with the narrator starting outside.  I kept her outside for the duration.  I wrote this off the cuff and I confess while feeling a slight shade of blue so it's a little bit sad.  I didn't really write too much about the paperback, it was more symbolic of the situation but this is what flashed when I started to scribble.  

Double teapot action today!  It's the write way, yes?

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Raggedy Paperback

I am quiet.  It is peaceful sitting here with him on the park bench where we first met, not speaking,   With only a few solitary souls roaming the Public Gardens, the occasional squawk of a duck and rush hour traffic slowing down on Spring Garden Road, we rest there together but alone.  I contemplate a whole glossary of goodbyes before he tentatively clears his throat and utters the first fretted words, “I’m sorry, I just don’t love you the way you love me.”

A rebellious gaggle of teenage boys without helmets whiz by on BMX bikes, the speed disrupts the powdery path, dust slowly rises up into the sliver of sunlight left around our shaded perch.  I am quick to shut my eyes during his admission to prevent tears from coming and ask him, “Do you think it’s true?” 

“Is what true?”

“That someone in Heaven listens to you when you pray, like that story in the raggedy paperback you gave me the night we met on this bench.”

He replied, unable to face the unpleasantness of the moment, “How should I know, I don’t even believe in God.” 

“I don’t mean to intentionally override the measure of this break-up with irrelevant questions it’s just that I don’t understand, you were so tender and urgent when you pressed the book into my hand.  You turned me into a courageous person; you smoothed my hair away from my face and told me I was beautiful.  Do you remember?”

He shook his head, “I don’t remember anything.”

“You lie.”

“I’m out of here,” he yanks himself up off of the bench, hikes his collar up around his face and stuffs his hands in his coat pockets, “I’m sorry, I tried.  It’s been fun.”

I watch him walk away from me, the howl of sirens race along South Park Street, an ambulance, en route to the nearby hospital district, I pray they are coming for me because my heart has stopped beating.  Yesterday we were laughing like fools, today divided like a war torn region.  My bag at my feet spills out on the grass when reach to pick it up.  There it is, the raggedy paperback, its well-thumbed pages, notated margins and underlined passages.  My sadness drops me into a memory, us leaning amorously into each other across the table at Paper Chase Café, I’m mooning over the book’s cover that he has held up and away from his face while he reads aloud to me the sweet story steeped in love.

I once was loved.  Now I am lost.  A weathered paperback novel, a history book of sorts, and the scars, the only mementoes that remain.  Either, happy endings.

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I look forward to my next prompt.  If you feel inspired, take a crack at the raggedy paperback too.

In propinquity,
Nic