Relief/Diner Online Submissions System

Visuals stimulate a part of the mind that awakens a need to know more. The actualities of the situations have already passed my sphere and cannot be known, but where fact has abandoned me imagination and wonder overtake. Covers of stories I will never read walk past my window, sit next to me on the bus, wake me on what was a Saturday morning slumber. We are all saying something. Some are screaming hoping that the reader won’t make it to the second chapter; others mumble like a shy sky wanting its high and wispy nuanced clouds to be gazed upon for more than just a fleeting moment. The truth past the glance makes not so much the difference now as does the hope of being seen (even if never known) and being re-created, painted over again into a fantasy, an everyday story, maybe farther away or closer to reality but nevertheless being read in a world of lonely people who think they are forgotten. To these souls I say, I see you…

The morning is warm but drizzly. Britney doesn’t mind the passing rain as it keeps her company while she waits for her dad outside the stamp and coin shop. It’s their day together once dad takes care of some things. Brit is at that age, around 8, where innocence and knowledge are not yet separated though will be within the next school year. She wears clothes that match a little too much and that cover her growing, bulging body but are a size too small.

Her time in limbo is mostly spent sitting on a bench kicking her legs back and forth, watching the sparse traffic of both cars and pedestrians. A few times, though, she’ll get up, not so secretively looking back to make sure dad isn’t watching though the shop window, and start walking up a concrete structure whose origin is the curb and inclines to barrier state to separate sidewalk from road. Little by little she goes, proud of her inching accomplishments and half scaring the motorists trying to judge which way she might fall. Not knowing yet how to be graceful, she awkwardly leaps with a grin sidewalk bound from no more than an average mans knee height. She lands with the force of her over-weight but rebounds like children do; she hasn’t bought in yet that “fat people” aren’t supposed to do that sort of thing. The shop door opens upon her last attempt and dad comes out with a brown bag in one hand and with his other reaches out for his daughter. Britney skips along to take his hand and they disappear around the corner.

Edward frequents the local Y about three times a week. He just recently retired and needs activities to fill up his days; the ten hours a week he helps out at the retirement community doing general maintenance doesn’t nearly occupy his hands and mind nearly enough. He always wears the same clothes at the gym – a plain white t-shirt tucked into not only his tan, lightweight corduroys but his underwear as well (which has its waistband showing slightly about his hips). Ed fights with appearing somewhat senile at times and just not caring. The normal machines greet him as he walks through the room quietly. Sets are not his goal – just doing enough to get tired is. His small frame hides his strength earned in the military and later refined in factory work where, if you didn’t move fast enough or push hard enough, you didn’t survive.

His small studio apartment is by choice, open spaces make him feel his aloneness. There is always some small breakfast food cooking in the kitchen area no matter what meal of the day. Laying the spatula aside and letting the eggs cook, he fiddles and turns his wedding band with a stare at the stove that is really a vortex into a memory replayed. He always cooked her breakfast… that was the one thing around the house she would let him do. Joyce, his wife, died fours years ago.

Edward still blames and forgives himself over and over for her death as much as any husband would. He asked his wife to run the errand that he was late in getting to. It was just a couple of blocks down from their house at the time where she was hit in a crosswalk. He didn’t see it, but felt it when it happened. He could barely make the last swing of his hammer that finished the wooden swing that he was making for them to enjoy their evenings together. The sirens creeping closer in the background made him nauseas as he connected his feelings with reality.

Ed and Joyce had a difficult marriage for many years as they battled with their only son’s leukemia which they eventually lost too. It had been for what seemed like an eternity before they connected again. As time healed them, a touch and a look started to mean something again… playfulness from their youth returned and a life together they thought they may never know was finally born in their days of gray hair and vintage faces. The recent years prior were a gift of grace. Still, Ed almost wishes that their love would never have truly been awakened. The loss of that love is now much more destructive than one can bear. He wishes to live his last years simplistic and well, but hopes for time to speed towards death where he can sit with his lover on their wooden swing for the first time.

Britney and Edward are real. Britney and Edward are fiction. They are no different than you and I. Our everyday stories that we see and write about in our minds and even live out may be immature and awkward, but why should we expect anything otherwise from creativity in puberty? We have and live these ordinary stories and can use them to convey a deeper meaning and truth without necessarily involving completely factual information. They can speak of childhood and family, love and death, fear and hope. We should always keep a hand in the dirt and an eye on the mystery of life.

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