Darling Files 008: Eve of Spring

I used to take writing classes at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and here’s an old prompt that I decided to respond to today, so technically this is something new, but also technically it has no place to go, but it was good write, and so on the blog it belongs.

PROMPT: We all walk past things everyday. Take in as much as you can – always.

3.19.23. Morning.

• The pain in my upper left shoulder and back. It happens when my running shoes are worn out, and when I’m trying to hold everything together, and I begin to hunch. I begin to cave into myself.
• The purple roller ball Jesse gets from the linen closet and the door squeaks and creaks and he brings it back to bed and puts the ball under my back.
• The blue wall I attempted to cover because it’s ugly and people have been pulling paint off of it since we moved in 6 years ago. I bought octagon or maybe they’re hexagons that stick to the wall, but I have no sense of space or measurement and didn’t buy enough so I made a few more from cereal boxes and paint from Harper’s old stash. I glued a card that says, “Home is where your story starts,” and another added: “But not where it ends.”
• Our brown couch that has a white towel on it because I need to clean up the mud Corby brought in after being outside and digging up what seemed like everything she’s ever buried in the backyard since she’s lived here. She came back inside and her face was full of mud and her paws were too and it was three days before Spring, with snow on the way, but Corby smelled like she’d been searching for it; like she believed she had the strength to dig it up for all of us.
• The swallow of water, of Mortrin, of coffee, the feel of a hot shower in the hopes it’ll make a difference. It doesn’t. “I can’t go to church today,” I tell Jesse, pulling on wool socks, a sweatshirt, and sweatpants using only my right arm. “Today I’m supposed to run 8 miles and get a haircut,” I tell him. “I know,” he says because he knows better than to say anything else.
• The silence of the house when everyone but me is gone, the sound of Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” the heating pad on my back, the feel of this notebook, this pen, the patch of sunlight Corby’s found to sleep on next to my feet on our living room floor.