Easy things were easy to do, but this was not easy [anymore]
He said to her, "When did you stop being on my side?"
She said, "Right about the time you moved from here to
"there."
She started hearing things in all the wrong ways---
hearing bad things from his kind words
and pain when he was only trying to preserve the suture
She survived on nostalgia,
but then again, so did he
And many nights, as the dinner table itself grew old along with them,
they had nothing left to say to each other,
except every now and again, he would notice the distance between their fingertips---
and their coffee cups---
and their plates---
She read her newspaper and saw the small bottle of soy sauce in the middle of the table,
stained, and aging as well,
perhaps years old---
and it reminded her of the Chinese takeout they used to leave unfinished on the nightstand
Now this one is awesome! Tactile imagery combined with an exclamatory ending. You can almost feel the grime on the outside of that soy sauce bottle as the reader travels through the mind of the woman recalling Chinese takeout. What a beautifully written piece. This seemed lyrical and more importantly, NATURAL. The part where the characters are sitting silent with distance between them is very reminiscent of flashback scenes in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Can't remember if you read that one, but if you haven't I think you should check it out.
ReplyDeleteAh sweet loneliness the bane of our existence, the desire to touch and be touched!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI also like everything about this one--the title, the story, the spacing, the picture.
ReplyDelete