Summer Solstice

A story slash prose poem.

One writer writes to his love:
“Dearest,”
then crosses it out.  Not the right word.  A good word, but not a word he feels he can use, not a word of the modern vocabulary.  He tries again:

 

“Dear you,
“I tried all day yesterday to find the shortest, simplest, cleanest way to say how much I’ve missed you.  I can’t express how badly I wanted to send you the sweetest, most eloquent statement, with the richest, most emotional language there is.  But every time I set about the task, the lines of thought got mixed up.”

 

Again, he crosses this out.  He doesn’t want her to know about his failure.

 

“Your eyes are like...” he taps the pencil’s eraser on the page three times.  “You and I are like two...” two distantly separate things, he thinks, but can’t say exactly what.  “When you’re not here I feel...”

 

“The last time I saw you was the last time I was alive.  I have been walking dead for months.”  Funny, he thinks... he hasn’t felt a hunger for brains in all that time.  “Though a great distance separates us...”

 

“There’s no use trying to narrow it down.  There’s too much about you to miss.  Everything I say feels like I’m doing no justice to the pain I’ve felt since you left.  Maybe I’m not the writer I thought I was, or maybe being without you is so...” he scribbles something incomprehensible at the bottom of the page and sets it aside to begin a fresh one.

 

“Dear Rose,
Do you remember the time we held hands in the park?”  He sits back and thinks of that beautiful day, the first day of summer, in the longest sunset of the year, when he felt more alive, more empowered by love than anyone ever had.  There was not even a kiss or a touch that could rival that one, in that moment, in that place.  He smiles at the memory and continues to write.

 

“Where was that park?  I saw an interesting tree there and I was thinking about photographing it.”

 

She probably wouldn’t remember.  And it’s beside the point anyway.

 

He begins again.  “Your face is so...”

“Your hands felt...”

He pauses and chews the end of the pencil.

“I’m cold here without you.
“Every time I try to say anything, it comes out wrong.  I’m getting nowhere.  Do you see what you’ve done, leaving me like this?  This is your fault.  There are no words.  There’s nothing.  Come home soon.”

He signs his name.

Beneath that, he writes P.S., but upon finishing the S, the lead snaps off.  He decides that is as good a place as any to end.

He bundles the pages up in an envelope - revisions and all - and sends them to her.  If she cares for him, she’ll read every bit of it.

 

Author's Note

Sometimes it's hard to say what you mean, or even to know it. You know?

Reviews

[Jon]

Been there, start writing then erase write then erase.. Stinks when you have feelings without the right words to describe them..lol This will make a good story, keep writing it. Good job:D

[Analgesia]

It's all about communicating and sometimes mistakes can be poetry. I have never before been inspired by writers block, but there it is. This piece kind of touches on problems that I've been having as well, about how sometimes there are no words in the American vocabulary, or; more extensively, the English vocabulary in it's entirity, which actually capture an idea or a concept. I'm sure there's a solution, a way to ommunicate perfectly but I can't quite find it. It's the plight of all writers in the end. Regardless, I hope I was of assistance and thank you for writing something worth reading.

[Bette]

this is great, i love the way you wove the title in there. it makes me want to know if she opened it.