Saturday's Storyteller: No Prompt
by Belinda Roddie
This is how it starts: A bottomless pot of tea on an unheated stove. The coldness of a brew that's meant to taste like seasons greetings, but instead the cold water reminds you of salty oceans from small, personal reservoirs.
Work begins at sunrise. If you're lucky, you'll feel appreciated for your efforts one out of every twenty times. A compliment typically disappears into a black hole, a gesture of gratitude brushing fingers against a wall. It has been a long time since you've been told, "Thank you," for being where you are.
You pour yourself a mug of stale leaves. You read fortunes that are missing both the second and the second to last words, so you don't know if the future is positive or negative. In your living room, it is dimly lit, and frigid. A stand-up comedian reminds you of how silly it is to be human. You laugh, only because you wish you could forget you were such a fragile carbon lifeform.
Work ends at sunset. When it's dark, her warmth envelopes you. Her warmth is the only thing that makes your heart beat. But while you are alive, you feel the weight on your shoulders. It has been growing for two months. Two months of adding boulders and slabs and malignant masses. There is a hole beneath your ribcage, but above your stomach. And it devours the meaning of words.
You drink your tea. It tastes faintly of better times. Oddly, you also smell rose. Appropriate, perhaps. But the concoction doesn't heat you up. It sits sadly in the pit of your own anatomy. You set the porcelain down on a glass table, and your hands become brittle, too. You are reminded of a four line poem you wrote back when you were less tired. Less vulnerable. But just as emotional.
You remember the start of the stanza. But you don't remember how it ends.
There was no prompt provided for this week's Storyteller.
This is how it starts: A bottomless pot of tea on an unheated stove. The coldness of a brew that's meant to taste like seasons greetings, but instead the cold water reminds you of salty oceans from small, personal reservoirs.
Work begins at sunrise. If you're lucky, you'll feel appreciated for your efforts one out of every twenty times. A compliment typically disappears into a black hole, a gesture of gratitude brushing fingers against a wall. It has been a long time since you've been told, "Thank you," for being where you are.
You pour yourself a mug of stale leaves. You read fortunes that are missing both the second and the second to last words, so you don't know if the future is positive or negative. In your living room, it is dimly lit, and frigid. A stand-up comedian reminds you of how silly it is to be human. You laugh, only because you wish you could forget you were such a fragile carbon lifeform.
Work ends at sunset. When it's dark, her warmth envelopes you. Her warmth is the only thing that makes your heart beat. But while you are alive, you feel the weight on your shoulders. It has been growing for two months. Two months of adding boulders and slabs and malignant masses. There is a hole beneath your ribcage, but above your stomach. And it devours the meaning of words.
You drink your tea. It tastes faintly of better times. Oddly, you also smell rose. Appropriate, perhaps. But the concoction doesn't heat you up. It sits sadly in the pit of your own anatomy. You set the porcelain down on a glass table, and your hands become brittle, too. You are reminded of a four line poem you wrote back when you were less tired. Less vulnerable. But just as emotional.
You remember the start of the stanza. But you don't remember how it ends.
There was no prompt provided for this week's Storyteller.
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