Taking time to arrive
Taking time to arrive
Challenge: write a story that unfolds over an appreciable period of time. Meander, follow digressions, insert odd bits of content, imagery, emotions.
Last night, while you were out,
(Unusual, you're almost always at home)
A phone call, an unknown woman's voice.
Your niece.
I'd met her once, briefly, five years ago -
Your mother's funeral,
The only one of her family to speak
(They didn't come back for the tea.)
She wanted to leave you a message:
Your brother passed away on Monday,
"I felt I owed it to him to let him know".
Dispassionate words conjuring a lifetime of distance.
I met your brother for the first time at the hospital
Where your mom lay dying.
He seemed charming, even funny.
Not how I'd expected from the tales
Spun between you and your mom.
Of his long school summer holidays spent with relatives
Leaving you, eight years younger, in the family home.
How he'd come home changed, wilder.
Of how he'd seemed so grown up to your primary school eyes
Vespa, mod clothes, girlfriends, working,
The car he'd eventually sold to you.
Of how he'd once left his wife for a new girlfriend
(Preferred by you all) only to go back to her,
No wonder his wife would have nothing to do with you.
Of how your mom was left on the doorstep, in the rain, not invited in.
Of how she didn't see her grandchildren
(Wouldn't know them if I passed them on the street)
Or him, until her illness.
He hurt you badly then,
Becoming a brother again, briefly,
Until he read the will, and in his anger turned on you
Fracturing the detente, living up to those tales.
Now he has gone, and you say it's unreal
Like hearing of the death of a stranger.
But your silences give you away.
Pick up the phone. Make a connection.
© Copyright 2019. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved
Challenge: write a story that unfolds over an appreciable period of time. Meander, follow digressions, insert odd bits of content, imagery, emotions.
Last night, while you were out,
(Unusual, you're almost always at home)
A phone call, an unknown woman's voice.
Your niece.
I'd met her once, briefly, five years ago -
Your mother's funeral,
The only one of her family to speak
(They didn't come back for the tea.)
She wanted to leave you a message:
Your brother passed away on Monday,
"I felt I owed it to him to let him know".
Dispassionate words conjuring a lifetime of distance.
I met your brother for the first time at the hospital
Where your mom lay dying.
He seemed charming, even funny.
Not how I'd expected from the tales
Spun between you and your mom.
Of his long school summer holidays spent with relatives
Leaving you, eight years younger, in the family home.
How he'd come home changed, wilder.
Of how he'd seemed so grown up to your primary school eyes
Vespa, mod clothes, girlfriends, working,
The car he'd eventually sold to you.
Of how he'd once left his wife for a new girlfriend
(Preferred by you all) only to go back to her,
No wonder his wife would have nothing to do with you.
Of how your mom was left on the doorstep, in the rain, not invited in.
Of how she didn't see her grandchildren
(Wouldn't know them if I passed them on the street)
Or him, until her illness.
He hurt you badly then,
Becoming a brother again, briefly,
Until he read the will, and in his anger turned on you
Fracturing the detente, living up to those tales.
Now he has gone, and you say it's unreal
Like hearing of the death of a stranger.
But your silences give you away.
Pick up the phone. Make a connection.
© Copyright 2019. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved
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