Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Friday Flash: Exile

The wooden sill below the third floor window bears the scars made by his coffee cup. One ring joins another, each one etched into the peeling paint. The most visible appears alone at the window’s edge.


Each morning she awoke to find him there with his fresh-brewed coffee, his eye trained on something in the distance. He was illusive, a specter, a ghost made up of diesel smoke from city streets and dust from rural dirt roads.


He never learned to pronounce her name, even after months of knowing her and weeks of sharing her life. She suspected that the name he gave himself was fiction, a name created to avoid detection, connection to family in that place far away. In that faraway place, he taught at the university. Sociology, she thinks. When she met him, he worked at a gas station where he washed grease away from the concrete and scrubbed human waste from the bathroom porcelain fractured like bone.


She will always remember him as the moon. Lines, ridges, tiny craters marred his body. Her eyes feasted upon it only during those nights that white light illuminated the room. Her hands were always afraid of what their touch would find.


The window is now empty. He no longer works at the gas station, leaving behind a week’s worth of pay. He is not at the shore staring at boats going out to sea, a place she found him once before. The window now is empty both day and night.


She never expected him to stay forever. There is so much distance between the moon and where she plants her feet each day. Now, under crisp sheets, she sleeps alone. And each night, she waits to be bathed in moonbeams.

21 comments:

  1. Your prose is rich. I loved the line 'the bathroom porcelain fractured like bone.'
    Well written.

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  2. the likening to the moon is very well done.
    And he certainly was a rather spectral presence in her life.
    Very rich piece, there's a lot of layers here

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  3. I love your imagery. I agree with Michelle, your prose is rich. You have a wonderful set up here for a longer piece. I want to know more about what happened between her and Moon. This could be a broader short story or even the start to a novel.

    Nice work.

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  4. Deb, Hadn't thought about making it a longer work. Thanks for the suggestion.

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  5. You've created a very dreamlike piece here, both surreal and haunting. Very nice work!

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  6. Yes, definitely rich prose with great imagery, as others have said. Well done.

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  7. You write with a poet's sensibility for word choice. Gorgeous prose, I feel the yearning. Peace, Linda

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  8. As others have said, rich prose with many layers. It would be an excellent start to a novel!

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  9. Lyrical prose. Just beautiful, dreamy, lush.

    Last paragraph? Loved it.

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  10. I loved the imagery used, especially the porcelain fractured like bone. The ending had me a little confused, but it was lovely. Thank you.

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  11. Like written velvet . . . so dreamy and thoughtful. Nice work!

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  12. Even though several have already said so, it's worth saying again - beautiful prose. This is soothing really. I look forward to reading more of your work.

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  13. Enjoyable read. Feels illusive as if hinting at something larger. The moon connection produces a strong emotional tie while painting a vivid image.
    -David G Shrock

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  14. Interesting that the first image to define him are the stains of the coffee cup and that she thinks of him as the moon. Coffee cup stains come in two shapes: circle and crescent.

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  15. Even though there is so much for the reader to fill in, your story does not feel too sparse. You give enough detail to show both her attachment and her sense of loss and longing. I like the details you've left out. After reading the story, I'm still thinking about it and still filling in the blanks, and I love that!

    One criticism is on the sentence where he no longer works at the gas station and left his paycheck. Most of your story is very dream-like or surreal and moves along beautifully in that way. But that sentence, or that idea feels too ordinary or commonplace for such a magical kind of story.

    Anyway, that is a very minor note to a wonderful flash. Thanks for sharing this! ~ Olivia

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  16. Oh I LOVED the coffee rings to set the stage. Your imagery is so very vivid. Her longing, the loss,how separate they both were even when physically together ....so sad and lovely.
    GREAT piece of flash.
    Karen :0)

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  17. Thanks to everyone for your feedback and kind words. I especially appreciate Olivia's comment on that one sentence and I'll probably revise it. Thanks, Olivia!

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  18. I loved this story, and I have a different opinion to Olivia in that I loved the sentence where he leaves behind his pay at the gas station - it explained the story for me & grounded the beautiful magic of it in reality.

    I understood the story as an exploration of a sociology professor doing ethnography, & what this looks & feels like to the people he meets... particularly the ones he gets close to.

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  19. Very poetic and some lovely use of extended metaphor here. The coffee rings on the window sill is a great image of absence. Lovely.

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