Rise and Release - Writers Forum

murdershewrote2005 · 03-31-2008, 11:50 AM

*This is a snippet of something I am working on for my writing class. It is, as yet, unfinished.*

She sprinkles flour over the formica countertop as if she’s spreading fairy dust on secrets to make them disappear. Just think happy thoughts and then…But she’s no Tinker bell. Her hair falls across her face in tangles, scarlet curls that look like licorice whips and smell like day-old bread. Her eyes are a creamy hazel, the color lost somewhere between the brown of perfectly baked bread and emeralds. Time plagues her face, from the lines around her lips that make her smile look like a stick drawing of a solar eclipse to the marks by her eyes, bony fingers stealing her life away one minute at a time.

She’s no Tinker Bell; she can’t even make herself disappear. She draws a line in the flour, like footprints in the snow left by children who still believe in Santa Claus. Anger surges and she wipes them out with one swift move. Flour settles on the cupboards and the walls like fingerprint dust left over from a crime scene. Her hands are drawn to her face when she feels tears at the corners of her eyes. She brushes them away, flour and pain filling the gaps time has left behind with sourdough.

Dough rises in the bowl at her right. It is a dish she was given after her grandmother passed away, stainless steel, scratched and cold. She wonders what else has been in there. Maybe someone else’s pain, someone else who watched the dough swell.

The higher you rise, the further you fall. Her fist sinks into the loose ball of dough, but she imagines her knuckles deep in flesh. That is the difference between real life and the bakery. You can beat the hell out of dough without worrying about cops showing up at the door with handcuffs.

Zorell · 03-31-2008, 10:14 PM

Very insightful.
Will you be posting the finished peice? *crossing my fingers*

murdershewrote2005 · 04-02-2008, 07:19 PM

Sure. Here is some more of it.

Alexa

I looked up faith in the dictionary once when I was a little girl. This is what I found:
Faith: belief in, devotion to, or trust in someone or something without logical proof.

What I always wondered was, if you lose your faith, can you ever find it again? Or is it like losing socks in the dryer? It was five years ago that I lost my faith. Five years that felt like five decades to me. I am sitting in the first pew of the church I attend with my husband's family, staring dead ahead, frozen, glazed in grief. Her casket is so tiny, like a shoebox decorated at the last minute, because no one expects to be in need of a casket that small. It is pink like the little jumper Ethan and I brought her home from the hospital in, with little red roses engraved on the lid. Red for blood, too much blood. I can feel my husband's hand against my own, it's warm, comforting even. This is the only part of my body that hasn't numbed itself yet.

I have been waiting to wake up from this nightmare for almost a week. I keep expecting her to cry because she needs to be nursed again, but she doesn't cry and I don't wake up. There are bruises on my arms where I've pinched myself and I've been asked more than once if its Ethan's fault, but the truth is, it's my own. Less than an hour later, we are in a sea of granite, names, and dates. There is a hole in the ground, a deep, dark hole that doesn't seem to have a bottom. I remember then, that Chloe is afraid of the dark. I watch a group of sympathetic strangers lower the casket into the waiting darkness, into nothing. They pretend to understand, but how could they possibly? This isn't like losing socks in the dryer.

I wrap my faith in a pink receiving blanket and bury it in the ground under a granite marker. I give my faith back to God, because I have no choice, and I decide, if this is being loved, I would rather be alone.

Ethan

She smiles for the first time in six months. I watch her knead a ball of dough shaped like the swell that is beginning to struggle against the silky fabric of her favorite shirt.