An Agreement
Fiction published by Rue Scribe June 15, 2020
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Short Stop: Waiting
L.C. Hill I’m waiting. Still after all this time. Someone said, “He’ll just show up and knock on your door one day. That’s something he’d do.” I wish they had never said that. Even before you left, I knew you would go. I’m an expert…
Short Stop: Focus
L.C. Hill
The yoga lady on my iPad tells me to ground through my left foot and find my focus. Focus, she says today. Focus, balance, believe, reset, nurture. It’s been something different everyday. I look at the shelf on the wall in front of me. She says to take a deep, cleansing breath and focus.
My eyes land on the small, round ceramic vase where I placed the dried roses from a bouquet he had given me last summer. I never could bring myself to get rid of them.
Focus. I try to ground through my foot. Focus. My jaw tightens. Feel what you’re feeling, she says.
*
”Why can‘t I find a grownup like Grace’s husband?” I texted my best friend a few days before. The new season of Grace and Frankie had started. We love it. Some days, we are it.
“Because he’s not a real husband!” she emphatically answered. “I don’t trust him.”
“I keep wondering when they’re going to kill him off.”
“I kinda see you with a Barry.”
“Is that because I’m a bitch like Brianna?” I asked.
“No, I think you should be more like Brianna…channel her bitchy, empowering energy.”
I had never thought of it as a good thing.
*
Focus, the yoga lady says. Feel the burn, you can make it. You’re doing great.
I reach with both hands, fingers stretched like the yoga lady has been telling me to do for twenty-four straight days as I balance, believe, reset, nurture. I tug on the flowers until they finally come out of that vase I forced them into all those months ago. It drops to the shelf with a clank.
I crush them with my fingers and let them fall into the trash bin.
I return to the mat, ground through my foot, and take a deep, cleansing breath.
Focused as fuck.
Image credit: L.C Hill
Short Stop: A Good Enough Reason
L.C. Hill “I don’t understand how we got here,” he said to me. He was the nice guy, the one I had been looking for all these years since my divorce. He wouldn’t understand even if I told him. It took me weeks, after all,…
Short Stop: Over
L.C. Hill I do this thing where I pull out my dark gray underwear on important days. You might consider them my lucky underwear. I don’t know that it’s luck. It’s more like hope for better things. I don’t know why it’s the dark gray…
Blue on Yellow, or I Forgot You Died
For a while, I forgot you died there on the yellow linoleum of my childhood / Blue and yellow are opposite on the color wheel / a complement to one another / You and I were blue and red, turned purple with silence and waiting / Once in a while, I forget you left me so long before you died / I’ll be blowdrying my hair, and I want to call you to tell you about love, or that poem I published, or the trip I’m leaving on tomorrow / and I don’t know which I remember first: that you’re dead, or that it wouldn’t matter if you weren’t.
Short Stop: This Is Late
L.C. Hill
This is late. I couldn’t find any words.
I write about painful things. I find that easy. There’s nothing painful right now. I find this hard.
That’s really fucked up.
And really fucking amazing.
