I’ve been trying to do more regular writing practice, and have fallen in love with the amazing “A Writer’s Book of Days” by Judy Reeves. The book provides a different writing prompt for every day of the year. The purpose of using a writing prompt is to just get your hand moving across the paper, nonstop for a set amount of time. It’s not quite a free write, but it’s still something raw and unpolished, not really intended for consumption. That said–I’m going to share some of the end results here (sometimes with very slight modification). Not because they’re anything great, but because I am proud of getting into the habit or writing practice and it can be nice to share that with the world from time-to-time!
Date: 3/11/19
Prompt: The world before you were born
Fire. It’s the first thing that comes to mind. Which is funny, because I used to be unable to–or unafraid of?–lighting matches. Maybe it’s like fire had to have its way in the world before I arrived to snuff it out.
Now, an ocean. How different an image! Unless the ocean stretches on, passing behemoth blue whales a shade darker below, to reach a “deserted” island where smoke signals rise into the sky. A man, castaway, like Tom Hanks & Wilson, trying to make contact. And before him, the first man, or woman, discovering fire for the first time.
The world before I was born is different than the world before you were born. I knew that world. It was cotton candy and sticky fingers, sticky lips, the corners of your lips stuck together and then cracking from sugar and tongues and long days in the summer sun, splashes from water rides and from early evening thunderstorms. It was a world of driving fast, too fast, because a 16-year-old doesn’t have a brain well-enough developed to actually think through–well, anything.
I’m thinking of the water, the river, the woods dotting the banks, the sound of boats & kids’ laughter & dogs barking at intruders far away.
To intrude, what is that, really? A burglar can intrude (query: can a burglar not intrude?), but so can your best friend, your family, your lover. To intrude isn’t always even bad, it can be welcome respite sometimes, respite from the thoughts you can’t turn off but wish you could.
The world before you were born was secrets. It was shame, dark alleys, private message on phones named after candy bars and sharp objects meant to cut, to raze things to the ground. I saw him one time at the movie theater. He was not alone, but I was, and I avoided him. Drowned it all in Snow Caps and Milkduds.
There was one night, at Home Depot (of all places!)–I can’t say much. Why not? Because secrets are in my blood, they’re in your blood, ours. Silence is sometimes the cost we pay for delight. For keys and doors back to days long gone, to parks and to bars, to memoirs sticky with blood that no on else can see or taste.
But you can taste it, I know you can, because I can see you now biting your tongue, quite literally.
Speak up. There is a truth buried. It is so deep I’m not even sure that you see it yourself. But for me, it is so clear.
It is on the creases of your face, your forehead, your eyes. It is your hardness, your firm handshake, your body.
I quiver as I stand before you because I know I am in the presence of something, someone?, who was there before it all. You transcend time. The world before you were born, it was yours none the same, wasn’t it?
Light a cigarette. Blow the smoke. May it meet someday with the smoke billowing from an island, a fire in the middle of a vast ocean. (All oceans are vast, fool). That fire was first, and that fire was you.
A soccer ball. Grass stains on socks pulled up over shinguards. The whistle blows, and they’re off. Running down the field, chasing the ball. Black & white in its simplicity.
When secrets weighed nothing.
Maybe it’s not about ridding, extinguishing all secrets.
Maybe instead it’s just about lightening, hollowing the core out and making a shell of it all that is easier to carry.
But is it the secret, or you, that is hollowed? What is a secret, if not truth, and heavy truth at that?
The world before you were born.
What a place it was, marvelous imagination, endless wonder. But empty, too.
