My brain, she is explodo with Trolls, and Magic Forests, and #$@!#$@ revisions, and I am going to take a break for a while. But since I teased about this sort of thing, I thought I ought to give you an example of something written purely for fun. Its not the letter I mentioned earlier - parts of it, maybe - but its a good example of what you get when you pass an appreciation for Pablo Neruda, Rilke, and Richard Matheson through a John Hughes-conditioned cultural filter. No title on this. Just something Swoonworthy. :) ********************************************** He realized he could only truly breathe in those spaces where she was, in those rare moments when they passed each other, sharing the same air. Every other draw of his lungs merely marked time until he could be near her again. Hour by hour, day by day, he was living, but it was only next to her, in those few fleeting seconds on Tuesday afternoons and the occasional Thursday, that he was he really, truly, alive. He occasionally wondered if the amount of attention he paid to someone he barely knew meant he was an admirer-from-afar, or a stalker, and finally concluded it was the former, because he only ever saw her in the only two places he went anyway. It was Tuesdays (and the occasional Thursday) when she went shopping at the market next to the art supply store, which was where they met. He was buying a very particular brand of kneaded eraser, which could only be found in that particular store. She was buying frisket, markers, and a block of watercolor-grade art paper. The pen she was using to sign the credit card slip ran out of ink halfway through her signature, and he took the opportunity to offer her one of the six red pens he was carrying in his breast pocket. She smiled at him, said thank you, and exhaled life into the space between them as she finished her blue-and-red signature and unconsciously pocketed the pen. He knew that she liked the Chocolate-Mint Tea, because when he first noticed her at the market, the tea was all that she bought. It was the only thing she bought the second time he saw here there, when he was pretending to examine the quality of the bulk cashews, and the third time, when he inadvertently backed into the display of gluten-free imitation puffed rice cereal. It was only by the swift actions of a restocking clerk restoring the large cardboard display that he managed to avoid looking completely foolish, and only moderately so. The fourth time he saw her at the market, she left without purchasing anything. A closer examination revealed an empty space where the tea had been, and a casual inquiry revealed the terrible news that the store had discontinued stocking the product. It had only just happened, and he suddenly realized that she may not know her favorite tea was no longer available to purchase there. That was on a Tuesday. By the close of business Wednesday, he had purchased every box of Chocolate-Mint tea from every other store that carried it in a thirty-mile radius. By noon on Thursday, he had negotiated an arrangement with one of the stocking clerks at the market (not the one who had been involved in the gluten-free cereal display incident, who was on a junior-management career track, and thus not moved by a passion-based plea to assist someone with a not-entirely-legal stocking proposal, but the clerk with the nose ring who had the tattoo of a poem by Keats across her shoulders, which marked her to the discerning as a True Romantic) to basically fake an SKU and place the boxes of tea where they had previously earned a place on the shelves. When she came in that Thursday (which was a surprise, but not unexpected, as she had once previously broken her Tuesday shopping ritual with a Thursday excursion) he was already waiting on the other side of the aisle where he could be close, and breathe the same air as she did for the few brief moments that it took her to select her tea. The aisle faced the edge of the produce section, where limes were piled high in a display that overwhelmed the corner of the store with the scent of citrus. To him, the air that made him come alive smelled of limes. Voices on the other side of the aisle suddenly snapped him to attention. She was discussing the tea, which she was evidently aware was not supposed to be available at that store any more, with the girl with the Keats tattoo, who was spilling the beans. To his increasing embarrassment, he stood there, listening, as the clerk-turned-Benedicta Arnold explained to her every facet of his grand Romantic plan to circumvent the free market and foot the bill for two hundred dollars worth of Chocolate-Mint tea just to make certain that the next time she came into the market, she would still be able to find it there. He heard her ask the clerk why anyone would do such a thing, and the clerk replied, “I think he just really likes you, and he wanted to see you again so maybe he could ask you out. I don’t really know — you could ask him if you want. He’s standing on the other side of this aisle, next to the limes.” He closed his eyes and inhaled, expecting that it might be the last time he drew in the air that they shared, waiting for the inevitable approach, and gentle explanation, and the possible declaration that she suddenly hated Chocolate-Mint tea… But none of that came. He exhaled and opened his eyes just in time to see her leaving the store, carrying a small grocery bag. He walked around the end of the aisle to the tea display, and to his surprise and delight, two of the boxes were gone. Where they had been was a folded slip of paper on which she had written her name and her email address. Her name was written in blue ink, the email address, in red. He bought two bags full of limes and walked home, more alive than he had ever been, breathing in the air of the space where she was, which had suddenly become as large as the world.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 05:02:39 +0000
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