Noteworthy Writing Prompt #13
"Write about one broken arm off a pair of glasses."
This idea took me in many different directions, I'm afraid, and I had difficulty choosing just one route. I've been pretty sick the last 2 weeks as well and had trouble focusing on this prompt. I was also busy putting together a few stories for a lesson I had been asked to do for last Monday. Hence, my tardy post. I apologize.
"Stop making excuses!" was Rene's reply. Well, I suppose I could have put something together in the five minutes I had between driving to Pony Club, Track, Steveston, SuperStore, Ikea, CR, and home where an array of other tasks were waiting for my attention these past two weeks... But if I had done that, the story wouldn't have been very good. I'm a perfectionist after all, and we need time to get things just right.
"Stop making excuses!" I hear him say again. Truth be told, He's right and I would like to write one story a week. That's my goal and I will try to stick with it. Good or bad... I will post it! Hope you enjoy this one.
Rescue Operation
By Anuschka de la Court
She shivered as her hands reached into the warm soapy water. Her
body was icy cold, but her hands were now warm as she washed off the remnants
of the spaghetti dinner she had just consumed with her husband. The sun was
going down behind the mountains casting a bright orange shadow along the tops
of the pine trees. Peace. Finally peace.
The last five years of her life had been chaotic. A whirlwind tour
de force sweeping her in all different directions except the one she wanted to
go in. Everyone needing something from her, her kids, her mother, her boss, her
friends, and her husband, Kate was a people pleaser, doing everything for
everyone else, except herself. She felt like she was going to explode. Yet
somehow, she kept the war within contained. No one knew how deeply broken she
felt. No one knew how depressed she was. Not even her husband. Or so she
thought.
It was all her fault, she felt he instigated about a month ago.
“You’re not engaged anymore.” John blamed their lack of sex and
marriage trouble on her and he was feeling frustrated, “You’re not fun anymore
and I just don’t know how much more of this I can take.” Then he stormed out of
the house in a dark cloud that screamed divorce. Pulling her further down into
that dark pit where the shadows clung and suffocated any light that may have
been hidden in the caverns of her soul. Nothing was safe from the darkness
anymore. She was broken.
“I’m done.” She whispered to a closed, slammed door and her husbands
back. “I don’t want to be here anymore.” She cried to God.
That night, in her own shy way, she wrote what she felt deep down
inside, on paper.
Pain
Sharp
Piercing
Deep
into my heart
Numb
Dazed
Blockage
in my soul
Sadness
Aching
Loneliness
ripping me open
Defeating
me
Where
is the encouragement I need?
“I’m
such a disappointment,” he says
Not
by words but by body language
Unsaid
disenchantment in his eyes
Unspoken
words of love
Broken
promises ‘to love and cherish till death do us part’
Yet
death is here
Death
of spirit
I do
not live up to his expectations
He
does not love me unconditionally
Frowning
upon what’s undone
Rather
than seeing what’s done well
Judgments
weigh me down
I
falter
I
fall
Who
will pick me up?
I keep
hoping it’s him
My
partner
My
love
It’s
not
Who
will pick me up?
I
cry in the shadows
Alone
John found it the next morning. It had fallen out of her flannel
kitty pajama pant pocket in the bathroom the previous night.
That’s why they were now washing dishes in Jasper National Park. The
place where they went on their Honeymoon fourteen years ago, a hopeful attempt
to rekindle the spark that many years of busy turmoil fanned out.
The state of depression was a dark place to be in and she doubted he
would have the courage to stay. His body language towards her for the last year
was screaming, “I got to get out of here!”
“Yet,” she hopefully thought, “he’s here standing beside me, drying the
dishes.”
As she scrubbed the pot she felt her wedding band slip off her
finger. She tried to reach for it through the soapy water before it reached the
open drain, but it slipped through her fingers.
“No!” she called out, “my wedding ring went down the drain.”
“At least it didn’t go down the toilet,” John smiled. Kate looked up
at him and was taken aback. He was looking at her the way he used to. There was
a spark and softness in his eyes that she hadn’t seen in a very long time.
“Let me have a look.” As Kate stepped back out of the way, she
watched her husband take charge of the rescue operation. For that’s what it
seemed to Kate. He was persistent in retrieving the ring and it took a few
attempts. Finally, he broke off one of the arms to his reading glasses and used
the end of it to pull up the ring that had lodged in a nest of spaghetti
noodles just past the entrance to the drain. Then he cleaned it off.
“Here you are my lady.” He knelt down to one knee on the hard
wooden floor in front of the washtub, “for better or for worse. I love you.”
He said and placed the ring back on her finger.
