My desk is to the left, neatly organized items on cheap white plastic. A spiral-bound notebook sits on a schoolbook of local history, topped by a black planner, with a dying laptop on the desk’s other corner. I lay in bed thinking of all the things I haven’t done. Things I didn’t do yesterday, could have done today, hope to do tomorrow. Not work things, though, but things for me. And by me for others. Letters, songs, poems, stories…
The TV sits on a bookshelf against the opposite wall. It watches me in bed, as I drift through its worlds. A husband yells at a meek cop while the wife looks bewildered. Hikers document the old, stone-corralled roads that wind through Patagonia’s misty hills. People cry as rescuers strain through the rubble of their homes, searching for survivors, finding bodies of those who died in their beds.
I fall asleep trying to remember all the dreams I’ve forgotten. To feel the clarity of where I was. Those untold epics and depths and discoveries that bloom and roil as I slip through the night. Where is it all? How many times have I breathed lucidly, gasped from vividness, grasped at some sort of eternity? And what do I have to show for it? What do I have to show?
NECA TMNT Toon “Binky’s Day Out” Slash V2
16 hours ago
1 comment:
This is well-written - concise, telling, and vivid, with an economy of structure and word choice that stands out from your other work.
Some small issues:
-I'd change the last sentence. Its similarity to the immediately preceding question diminishes its power, and makes it come off as sort of cliché.
-"gasped" and "gasped" are also too similar in a way that doesn't work well for the piece - I'd love to see a different word in place of "grasped", something with a bit more force to it. Repeating the same word, or a similar-sounding word, can take power and energy away from the text sometimes - it can slow it down rather than propel it forward, if used in the wrong circumstances.
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