Saturday, April 24, 2010

10 Minute Prompt: Overdoing it, or Doing it over

The first thing I feel is a throb at the back of my head. Lifting heavy lids, my eyes ache precariously and shut again. Throbs move around my scalp, slowly at first, back to front, then back again. I turn over in my bed, sotted sheets askew, blanket nowhere to be found. A dry martini insinuates itself between my ears. That was drink 1-3. Rum and coke sloshes around the top of my neck where my skull comes to rest. Drinks 4-7. This routine turns out the same. Last time the sheets were just as hot as this time. Lather, rinse, repeat. Drink, drunk, repeat. Next weekend is the do-over. Next week a whole new chance to change the score. 1 point for each puffy eye, 5 points for sour stomach, 2 points for pain in my forehead, 2 points for pain in the back of my head, 2 points for an aching neck. 4 points for difficulty breathing. Each drink drunk repeat promises to outshine the last, but it never does. They are all one long line of dull, creaking, blurry, mash-ups of each other. There is always laughter, there is always tears, there is sometimes vomit. There is often shame.

10 Minute Prompt: Write about Loving Loneliness

My emotions are scoured from my bones like the flash-flood run-off of a desert squall. Sadness drips into the sand, joy and bliss melt away on the rocks, gratitude steams up from the pavement, frustration trickles down a pane of glass. I am left with emptiness, no thin rope holds me safe, no one is herding me back to the fold, no hug awaits me, no spoken word reminds me that I'm human. Alone is all I feel, no hope of reconnection.

I would pay to feel this, I would revisit this spot as often as I can get away. I throw myself into an emptiness that doesn't catch me. Pure freedom, relinquished from responsibility of communication, adrift in indifference. I become inconsequential. Nothingness begins to feel like a pillow-top mattress. Nothingness is its own room, decorated by everyone who's ever been there. This room is more comfortable than any room I own. Abandon all hope ye who enter, free yourself from expectations. Loneliness is a four letter word. Loneliness is a place where I can't exist. Loneliness is my only solace. Loneliness is where I'm at my best.

Grunt Sculpin

Unh, unh. My coffee can cave, left here by the fan-footed barnacle that made it, fits my body like a tube dress. I wait for food to float by. It always does. Food is so stupid. I guess that's why it's called food. And that's why I eat it, because I am so smart. Unh, unh. I am so smart. My head looks just like the hard-hat on top of the barnacle that built this can. I am very convincing. Hunkered down in here, watching Big and Small with teeth swim by, no one ever mistakes me for their dinner. Unh, unh, slurp! Yep, that's what happens when food floats by. I just slurp it up. Food is so dumb. But tasty!

Unh, unh. Here comes Tony. Tony's been sniffing around my can for days. He's not fooling anyone with those laid back stripes rippling up and down his sides. This is how smart we are, we can talk by flashing dots and stripes on our skin. We don't have to say a word. But since I know you don't understand, I'll translate. My skin changes color to warn him, "I see you. Get outta here. This can is taken buddy." Tony's skin lightens up too, he's still mad from before. So I flash more warnings. "I don't care if you were here last week. You left. It's mine now. I know it's a prime spot. And it was cheap too!" I can say so much with a surge of color.

But Tony is insistent, and he's getting closer. This will not do. Unh, unh. All my skin turns the darkest shade of gray I can muster. I charge out of my can and nip at Tony's pectoral fin. He takes the hint, turns wimpy shades of white and gray
and jets off to sulk in the corner. I turn to strut back to my can. Unh UNH! "NO WAY!" Cynthia is just settling in to my can, her head's a perfect mimic of the barnacle. Her spots are a shrugging shoulder, "You leave it, you lose it." Dang!

I put on a contrite shade of purple with frilly stripes as I scoot over to where Tony is sitting. Tony is looking around like he doesn't notice me. He's spotty, orange and black. "Oh, hey," he says. Unh, unh, I scuff my fin on a rock, "Hi. How's the buffet here?"

"Oh, you know, a little food drifted by a minute ago. It was pretty tasty. A little salty though."

Saturday, April 3, 2010

10 Minute Prompt: Write about your favorite time of day

The sun slips larger and redder by the moment, closer and closer to the horizon until it kisses, lips flaring to touch the edge of the earth, and redder still begins to sink into the place that I can't follow just yet. The sky is molten lead around the line of the land, a slow fade into impossibly purple sky where Venus and Arcturus show us the way into the darkness. All of the land seems sucked, pulled toward the edge, where the last of the light is slipping away like the finger tips of the drowning man slipping underwater for the third time. Cicadas change into crickets. Hummingbirds trade places with moths, raccoons take over for squirrels, deer run across the road, coyotes yip their greetings to the new night.