In Search of…: Breakthrough for the week of 6/17/2019

What is missing? What space do you need to fill so you can write? Imagine: these are your footsteps. You have walked for hours in search of that which is precious to you. Write us about that experience – but, first read this. What if your writing was your child, you beloved, your future? What would you do to be faithful to it? How much time would you spend in search of it? Your turn:
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From Kate Shannon, in response to last week’s BTW: I was worn out. I finished loading the groceries in the car. It was 7 p.m. – and there would be a ninety mile drive back home. I slammed down the hatch, stopped to catch my breath and looked east. A half moon had risen. A boneless scarecrow waved its arms, bowed and twisted. It was too easy to tell myself a story that it was praying to the moon. I took a photo, promised my self to forget what I’d seen and drove home.

Safe at home I locked the doors, checked the windows as I always do and fell into bed.  I don’t know how long I had slept but half dreaming, half awake I sat up in bed as the memory locked deep within the busyness and hard work of my life returned. His face turned grey as the skin dropped from his eye sockets like liquid as he fell to the ground in slow motion, first to his knees, then hands then, ever so slowly the body landed softly as his life blood dripped  into the deep cracks of cement in the old neighborhood of south Los Angeles.

It was 3 in the morning, the half  moon disappeared beneath the marine layer to the west and the only sounds were from a party a block away and the occasional car coming home from a bar on Normandie Avenue.  Transfixed I stood holding his knife and watched his eyes become dull as the twitching slowed and finally stopped and he moved no more.  Backing away I breathed deeply and the beating of my heart brought me back to my surroundings.  I turned and began to run.  I ran down 91st street, past Normandie, Vermont Avenue, Hoover, Figueroa, I ran for miles and told myself that I would forget what I saw.

And now I remembered what I had left behind in the dark streets of Los Angeles all those years and incarnations ago.  — Kate Shannon

 

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