Something Light and Something Heavy

so the prompt for this was to write a poem to something, rather than someone. I tried different things but ended on this while in my stats lecture yesterday.

Ode to a Pilot Precise V5 RT

To my mighty sword
and the way your ink glides so smoothly
over my notebook paper
singing praise and prose and poetry
instead of the math notes
I should be taking.

To my wielder of words
may your ink never run dry
so long as I have melodious messages,
fantastical phrases, symbolic sentences
and the occasionally atrocious alliteration
to tattoo to this page.

My faithful friend,
you've stayed with me through the joy,
the despair, the hope,
and the many journals of teenage angst
that still sit (albeit haphazardly stacked and stowed away)
at the top of my closet.

This is for you, my beloved ballpoint.
In remembrance of the scribbled notes you’ve helped me create,
the love-addled poems you’ve aided in forming,
my miscellaneous lists and chicken-scratch notes.
O! I thank you, my eloquent ally,
For the permanence with which you stain the page.


This prompt was to write a story based on the style O'Brien uses in The Things They Carried. Basically, create a character (or characters) and talk about the things (literal or figurative) that they carry. So... yeah.

It was an accident

Geoff carries his daughter in his arms and bites down on his lip to stop the scream that’s threatening to burst from his chest. Her lifeless form is limp and heavy in his hold and his muscles strain slightly but he does not notice. He will not put her down.

The future that she was meant to have flits through his mind like a dove. Except that now that it has been captured, it never sings. This realization rips through Geoff like a knife: at first an acute, unbearable pain that leaves in its wake a constant and unceasing ache. A persistent reminder that he continues to exist when his reason for living does not cry or laugh or smile or love anymore. That her small fingers will never reach out in search of his again. That their arguments about cars and boyfriends and curfews have been stolen from them and cannot be replaced.

Geoff thinks of these things as he shuffles forward away from the crowd of loved ones. Away from Elisa, who hasn’t spoken to him since the accident. Since the squeal of tires as he hit the brakes and the wide blue eyes in his rearview mirror and the scream that never came. “I can’t bear to look at you,” she says to him two days after. But he doesn’t think of this. He thinks of the way her hair fell against the pavement and the hopscotch drawn sloppily on the driveway as he carries the shovel, full with the soft, heavy dirt to the hole that is too large and too deep for his child. He turns it and hears the earth patter against the coffin six feet deep and feels the familiar pull in his muscles that will always belong to his baby girl.

Geoff carries the little yellow ribbon she had in her hair that day in his left front pocket. He never forgets about it, but sometimes its weightlessness allows its existence to slip from his mind. His fingers tangle in it an hour later when he searches for a quarter and guilt accompanies heartache when he remembers it again. He rubs it between his thumb and index finger, trying to burn its presence into his memory. But like the shade of her eyes, it starts to slip away the minute he stops focusing on it.

Geoff doesn’t have to carry Elisa’s suitcase because a different man (taller, and with darker hair) already has it in his hand when Geoff arrives home from work one Tuesday evening. He isn’t jealous. He isn’t even upset because he expected this to happen months ago. After all, what kind of woman could bear to be near the man who killed her child? Let alone live with him, sleep with him, cook for him day in and day out. It was too much to ask of anyone. So sixth months after the day she vocalized the terror their five-year-old daughter could not, the words “I’m leaving you,” had already lost their effect.

Geoff carries the picture of Elisa and him and their beautiful baby girl in the worn leather wallet that was a birthday present from so many years past. He still wears his wedding band on his left finger, its weight a dull, but painful reminder that he once had things that meant more than life itself. He sits in his empty house that once made memories but now only holds their remainders and cobwebs. The sunlight is bright like his baby’s eyes used to be. The way the world seemed to be. Before it stopped spinning altogether and the brightest star in his life suddenly winked out.

But above all else, Geoff carries the guilt. His shoulders cave from its weight. His breathing is pained and short from the constant pressure it creates. But he does not shrug it off. It is his to bear and he does so willingly, waiting for the day that nature sees fit to return him to his shining star.



Thanks for reading.
Maggie