Month: March 2015

What’s Friday Freewrite? Find out here.

My writing muscles, rusty and ridden with arthritis in their old age¹, squeak and squeel² and catch as I try to capture that once fluid rhythm that I had once known when I’d regularly fed and nourished my writing, before the neglect, before the indifference, the laziness, the unwillingness to go on in the face of difficulty. I open the faucet, expecting an outpouring, and I find that the pipes have run dry.

Frantic, I run to the well, hoping to find underground reserves buried somewhere deep inside my psyche, and I find that it too is dry.

I collapse, a rag doll, to the ground, bury my face in my hands, and I weep.

I weep bitter acrid tears, tears of acid that burn the land as they fall to the ground.

I weep for the loss of all I loved and held dear, that priceless gem, the diadem I once wore atop my head with pride.

It’s all gone now, just a ghost, a hollow emptied soul howling in pain and anguish, wandering dusty ill-lit chambers late at night, accusing me of a terrible crime. I hear its lamentations, its accusations, and I can’t help but reach the same conclusions.

I am worse than a criminal. In doing nothing, I’ve murdered myself, along with everything I loved.

I deserve to die.

Footnotes

1. I wrote this after having neglected my writing for a few months. It took me a long time to feel confident again.

2. Should be squeal.

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What’s Friday Freewrite? Find out here.

He imagined what the meeting would be like¹, and he cried. He hadn’t met her yet, and already he cried. Enough premature emotional ejaculation and he was fairly certain there would be no tears left to shed for the event itself.

He tirelessly rallied against the imperfections of others² because he secretly harbored a grudge against the imperfections in himself.

He gazed out the tiny double-paned plastic porthole³, taking in the landscape below, ripples and folds in a great geological fabric.

Footnotes

1. I wrote this on an airplane last November, on my way to meet a woman I’d dated for seven months before finally going to meet her. I’m happy to report that the meeting went well, and we’re still together today <3

2. I’ve never done this myself, you understand. No, not once…

3. This I wrote the second time I was on an airplane three months later 🙂 Same destination.

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©2015 Jeff Coleman. All rights reserved. For reproduction rights, please contact the author (who happens to be a kind and eminently reasonable man.) Unless otherwise stated, images are copyrighted by various artists and licensed by Shutterstock.