100 Proof » Not so true

Never married

The Inadvertent Gardener — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:27:13 +0000

She asked him, once, why he’d never married. He half-smiled and shrugged.

The people you should be asking these sorts of questions are the ones who did get married, he said. They probably have more to say about the whole thing than I do.

But doesn’t it get lonely? she asked. What about all those nights alone in the dark?

Sometimes I’m lonely, he said. But I would rather be lonely than aggravated.

Filed under: Not so true

Slippery time

The Inadvertent Gardener — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:35:25 +0000

Time ran hard and fast—as if from a wide-open faucet—drops of it bouncing off the sides of the sink she had fallen into. At one moment, she thought it was Monday, then Saturday, then Thursday. She tried to look at her calendar, but it had plunged from her pocket.

She had lost all sense of agenda when she saw him form the words, when he told her everything hidden. Now, each moment, she vacillated between struggling against the flow and slipping into it, letting it carry her, her eyes closed, until she reached more solid ground downstream.

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Silence became cacophony

The Inadvertent Gardener — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:03:41 +0000

It was only once he returned to his office that he realized how quiet everything was. The season’s noise had receded, and now he was left with his coffee mug, his to do list, and the few emails that had come in while he was gone. While he was home for the extended weekend, the din of the holiday kept him from thinking—who knew his children played so loudly? But now, the silence of the office became its own cacophony, demanding answers to the question of why he was there, and when he’d be able to leave.

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Hope, holding

The Inadvertent Gardener — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:43:53 +0000

The sun seemed to slow down as it reached the horizon, as if it were reluctant to pass over that particular day. It spread heartbeat-red across the edge of the world, holding, holding, holding, like her breath as she watched, like her life as she waited, like her body, which she kept still as stone. Then it faded, the sky turning blue, then black above her. She had hope the light would return. She kept that hope inside her, ready to rise like the next day’s sun.

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A call from the edge of the map

The Inadvertent Gardener — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:10:14 +0000

On some nights, the air grew heavier around her the later it became. As the clock hands circled toward dawn, the world stretched out under the weight of it all, all the people she loved pressed further and further away. It was as if she sat in the center of some ever-widening map of relationships, the roads growing longer until the night ended.

She had forgotten how to convert the late-night load to something more modest, something that could be tucked in a corner, or under a bed. That’s why the phone, ringing at that hour, startled her so.

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Editing in her sleep

The Inadvertent Gardener — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:26:23 +0000

All too often, she found herself editing in her sleep, redacting words and adding new clauses to whatever stories spun through her dreams. She knew she needed to make changes, but didn’t know why they had to happen at such inconvenient times, when she would much rather be swimming through worlds that lacked language as her hair spread across the pillow. Instead, she tinkered. Instead, she played with puzzling sentences.

Filed under: Not so true

Lifted fog

The Inadvertent Gardener — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 06:59:29 +0000

The city pushed back the mist the next morning, the sun emerging like a starlet through a fog-filled stage. She watched it all happen from the window high above the street, her breath clouding the window when she leaned too close.

Come back to bed, he said from the shadowed corner of the room.

Soon, she said, though she knew she wouldn’t. She didn’t know how to tell him she’d reached clarity. She couldn’t explain the view—she only knew she was the only one of the two of them who could see it at all.

Filed under: Not so true