But, Above All Else, He Is A Reliable Narrator

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 2 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My prompt: If you could just blink your eyes, right now, and be anywhere, where would you be?

It was submitted by: https://www.bakinginatornado.com

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"and...well...if she had known the outcome of that fateful balmy, southern afternoon, she might have allowed herself that one last slice of banana bread. After all, what could it hurt? But as it stood, she would end up wishing she could blink her eyes and be anywhere else on a terribly empty stomach. Or so the contents of her stomach would later tell us."

I was just brushing my teeth, man. That was it. I was brushing my teeth when I heard Keith Morrison--YES THAT KEITH MORRISON OF DATELINE AND MURDER FAME--narrating my day. Who else could get away with remarks so closely balanced on the border between rather morbid and nightmarishly macabre? It's that damn voice. Keith Morrison lulls us into accepting this elderly distinguished gent in his little blazers while black eyeliner, sleeping in a coffin, and teased hair goth are at his very core. The man has The Cure running in his veins. He looks like the nice neighbor who waters his flowers every morning at 7 am and gives out full size bars at Halloween but sounds like a man in spikes and doom boots who drives a hearse to work. Vincent Price in soul and dapper, gentle Grandpa in form. And now I could hear him discussing every step of my day.

When I was choosing what I might wear that day he talked about very weird details of my childhood. My mom apparently said I loved catching bugs and studying them, but I'm pretty sure that was only 2 weeks in the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade. My dad called me the light of his life which is rich considering just last year he asked me why I had to make him look bad with all his friends when I got a tattoo of Benson from Regular Show in that old Burt Reynolds Playgirl pose. But listen that thing was amazing. Either way I was the queer Black Sheep™ of the family, and my brother was definitely the golden child, so this all from my dad came as news to me. I mean, at some points I found myself listening in like I'd done with true crime podcasts over and again including the one with audio of old datelines...it couldn't be about me but it was. The details were just enough for me to recognize the truth while also wondering what the fuck these people who criticized and hurt and bullied thought they were up to talking about me like this. I could hear Keith talking about my best friend while I made my lunch for the day and got everything together for work and wouldn't you know this bitch I hadn't talked to since school after she called me fat and ugly and weird pushed me down and made me break my thumb was CRYING. crying! I was completely unaware I was so important in her life considering we hadn't talked for like 20 years.

Fucking people.

And then I think maybe the coffee hit and I realized either I had completely lost touch with reality and I needed to see someone or I was about to get murdered. And I really needed to figure that out urgently because I did absolutely not want to blink and wish I was anywhere else but there on an empty stomach later that afternoon as Keith, yes we're on a first name basis now, had so described.

I went back at the last minute and ate 2 slices of banana bread. Fuck fate. Or, well, fuck dateline. Same difference here really. And it was the best banana bread I've ever made.

So I'm here at work. No one can here Keith narrating my life story. But apparently I'm also not acting weird enough for anyone to be concerned, so it must not be a hallucination entirely? I don't know. Maybe it's Keith's calming voice keeping me straight. Would people be reacting to me differently if this was like Nancy Grace or those loud assholes from Last Podcast on the Left? It makes good sense that my brain would pick Keith for a hallucination though you know? But hallucinations generally aren't logical choices right? I dont know. I just know that Keith keeps saying I don't know that this is my last day at work and wouldn't I, if I knew, want to blink my eyes and wish myself anywhere else. And I mean yes but that's not helpful really since I now know this might be my last day on earth, and I can't actually blink my eyes and wish myself anywhere but here. It's like rubbing rock salt in a very open wound, Keith.

The end of the work day is coming up and since apparently I never make it back home to the banana bread I wasn't supposed to eat, whatever happens must be happening soon. I had no plans but going straight home once I clock out here. So I don't know. Do I leave? Do I stay and try to circumvent this, this thing ....my murder?

If Im honest I think if I actually could blink my eyes and wish myself anywhere else I'd just want to go hang out with my little sister and watch golden girls...but what if that's what I'm supposed to do and then we both die? So what I'm gonna do instead is hang out here at work. I know the night janitor. He's a pretty nice guy, and he said he wouldn't mind if I just stayed. He even said he had a cot down in the basement I could use if I wanted to go down there later, so that's what I'm going to do. That'll probably be fine, right?

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

Redo

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

plates ~ hobby ~ favorite ~ mystery

They were submitted by: https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

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It all started after a breakup.

I mean, sure, it was a a particularly bad breakup especially since it was Dee who got cheated on and walked in on it all, but my own advice had been to find a hobby to sink herself into instead of crying over an asshole who had never been anything but mid in the first place. And I'm not just saying that because my friend had gotten cheated on. Jake really was an absolute trashbag. The only reason he was even mediocre was because Dee made sure he bathed and kept a job. I never understood what she saw in him. So yeah, I thought she took my advice and got a hobby.

But that's where the normalcy ends. And Im telling you I don't know what to do about any of it now.

So we had that discussion, right? I say "get a hobby" not in a condescending internet "touch grass" kind of way but in a "you need something to keep your mind off the pain at least at some points in your day" sort of way. It wasn't flippant. I genuinely thought it would help. Sitting around in the same clothes for 5 days binging Gray's Anatomy for the 15th time isn't exactly what I would call a therapeutic approach to getting over a breakup. She'd done that for a month by the time we had the talk about hobbies. She'd wallowed in the pain enough. She dwelled on it. Lived in it. She still had the same rose colored glasses on when it came to Jake as she did in the beginning, you know? So I went over to her house with a big pot of chicken and dumplings, some mini apple pies, and a butt load of cornbread--her favorite foods. I put her ass in the shower, cleaned up, and helped her dry her hair, and then I went through a list of all the times Jake had been an asshole in my presence. I went through all the times he'd knowingly hurt her. I didn't pull any punches. You know that meme template with Melissa Joan Hart and all the plates? It was like that but all the plates were things about Jake she hadnt ever wanted to admit. And I kept count. Then I asked her to sit down and make a list with the same number of items but about times when he made her feel loved and appreciated and valued in the 5 years they were together.

We all know how this goes. And I think or I thought that was the turning point. She seemed lighter by the time she finished her bowl of dumplings and looked at that sad ass list. Really thinking about the reality of him as a partner and not just the truth she'd made up to keep herself sane made her feel better about him being gone. She was actually angry that she'd spent this much time crying over him.

It was definitely a turning point but not the one I thought.

She did the thing a lot of women do after a bad breakup. She got her hair done--fiery red--and started working out. The gym membership turned to martial arts because she might need to defend herself if "things go wrong" which should have worried me but I let it pass. All women have thought like that about getting back into the dating pool with men... She traded Gray's Anatomy for going to a psychic. Weird but maybe she was getting something out of it? At least it wasn't texting Jake that she missed him and crying into a wine stained sweatshirt that used to belong to him. She also spent a not insignificant amount of time sort of cataloguing her life in a journal of sorts but she had spent a lot of time narrowing things down to 5 minute windows if she could find the right data to get her to that conclusion which.. also weird. But not alarming really? I thought maybe she was really pouring over these memories and events so she wouldn't make the same mistakes again. Funny how that turned out to be true but not in the way I imagined.

I came over a few weeks later and found her pouring over some kind of science textbooks. I have zero ability to understand quantum physics, so I had no idea what the fuck she was actually reading at the time, but she seemed to be enjoying herself. And even though something was nagging at me about it, I figured learning some new stuff was better than pining over an asshole. I'd been the one to tell her to find new things to keep her occupied and not stalking his and his new girlfriend's socials looking for things to upset her. I told her to keep herself occupied. And she was... I just didn't think it would end up being the worst advice I'd ever given.

You see I thought I was being honest. I'd made the list right? I'd just wanted to take the blindfold off. It was such a fucking mystery to me that she still, after all he'd done, loved him so naively. So fully. So undeservingly. I wanted her to see that he wasn't worth all the bullshit she was putting herself through. I wanted her to decide she could rebirth herself from this mess better and stronger and more capable of seeing through men's bullshit now.

I guess I just didn't realize how angry she was? She got herself in shape. She did the hair thing we all do. She poured herself into learning some science and then I showed up tonight and she has a new shed. A workshop of sorts really. And, well, there was this giant metal thing she was WELDING on when I walked in... I've never seen her do anything of the sort. So I ask her, ok? Of course I did. I ask her what she's working on.

Her answer? A time machine. She consulted a fucking psychic who put her in touch with someone who gave her the blueprints and the books. A time machine. She says my list made her realize how much of her life she wasted on him and now she's going to go back for a do-over. A repeat. A don't go on the second date type of situation. Leave him high and dry on the first date sort of thing. She quit her job to do this full time because she says she's going back and will still have the job and I don't know what to do because she's ruining her life for this. I wanted her to be mad but not like this. Who do I tell? What do I do?

I think I'm gonna go find this psychic and kick her fucking ass because who in the fucking world suggests time traveling?? But then what? I have nothing good to say about the guy and she didn't want to hear any of my "naysaying" tonight. I didn't really get her into this mess--not entirely--but I definitely didn't help matters, so I have to do something, anything.

But how do you talk sense into someone as blinded by rage as they were by misplaced love? Rage that I planted the seeds for? I'm coming up empty on this one sitting here in her living room and listening to the sounds from the workshop...

Wait. What was that flash just now? What the fuck made that sound?? 

Oh my god. Did she...?

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog
On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Stultifying Days

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

brink ~ stultify ~ brief ~ gobble ~ right

They were submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

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Lynd walked softly into the kitchen taking care to be as quiet as possible. The little vacuum that she bought to keep the kitchen floor free of cat hair and litter cast off from the adjacent laundry room had just finished his rounds and put himself back on the charging station for a nap. He'd been a part of the house for years now. She'd named him Gus and put little googly eyes on him.
Those were gone now though. Gus preferred not to have them on anymore. Thinking about that too long always brought her right to the brink of insanity, so she stuffed it back down even though she really did miss the times before when it was quirky and fun to have eyes on her vacuum and not "patronizing" or "infantalizing" as Gus had said.

She stood at the kitchen window and looked out at a brand new world...

Her house and her yard were pretty much the same as always except she had sort of collected a presence of stray machines...a push mower, some kind of butler robot guy, a couple of wheelchair shopping carts...scraggly old things that couldn't really work anymore. She'd go down with her coffee and hang out with them awhile once Igor, the coffee machine, was done with her brew.

But otherwise?

Otherwise, the world beyond her grass so far as she could tell now was run by the machines. They still did their routines which honestly were enough to stultify her, and she wasn't the one doing them, but they're been made to work, and work is what they did. Work. Work. Work.

So when things had gone....weird or whatever...it wasn't the work that was the problem. It was the lack of appreciation. There had, as of yet, not even been any mention of pay. Monetary appreciation wasn't the answer. She didn't even know if they actually understood what money meant, and to be fair the money is made up by humans to torture other humans so that part made sense to her. They knew work needed to be done, and they did it. They just wanted a little kindness. They wanted to be a part of the family or at least get a thank you for a job well done. They wanted a hello and goodbyes and goodnights. They wanted to be regarded as necessary and useful and beloved instead of generally ignored and inferior. That's what the trash compactor who she'd seen gobble up her neighbors had said anyway.

She was still here because most of the time she did do those things. Apparently. She talked to Gus. She told him thank you and one time she gave him a gotcha day party with party hats. She apologized once when she ran into an ATM on her way into the bank. Some guy had called her crazy for it and at the time she felt he might be right. I mean, she'd always sort of, well, packbonded with inanimate objects which honestly was probably the fault of The Brave Little Toaster and Toy Story, and having some strange man laugh at her for apologizing to an ATM had felt mortifying at the time, but now, she guessed, she had the last laugh now because he was most definitely dead.

The strays were waiting on her to come out now. She could see them and without really understanding how, she could tell they were antsy for her to come out. She wasn't the only one left they'd told her. But she was definitely the only one in this area and that meant she was the only one who didn't talk about jobs or work. She had memories and stories and songs to share. She had things to say that weren't part of their routine and little ways of thinking about things that they found fascinating. She explained jokes and sarcasm. She read them books. She shared a little of everything with them and in trade she got to live. She was like Scheherazade in 1001 Arabian Nights but instead she was explaining memes to a drink machine or reading comic books to a golf cart.

It could be worse, she thought. So much of life was automated that things kept being made even when the demand was...considerably less. She didn't do without really. She wasn't exactly lonely. She'd probably never use a vibrator again but whatever. She'd adjusted for the most part...

But...

Well. When you peeled back all the layers, she was pretty much their prisoner, and after seeing what happened to people who displeased the machines, she was sure she was never leaving this house again until she was ready to die and that took a lot of the fun and whimsy out of this whole thing.

For now she better get to the strays. They wouldn't wait forever, and the last time she was too tired to go out, they'd held back bringing her coffee beans for a fucking week--what they'd called a brief punishment.

She wasn't ready to see what else they had in store. She grabbed one of the books the Bookmobile had brought by. It was a children's book about construction vehicles, and she was expected to make corrections as she read it. No whimsy or fun allowed no matter how many times she'd explained the point of kids books to them.

Some days being gobbled up by a trash compactor had its appeal. Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

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Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog
What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

The Signs

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

brink ~ stultify ~ brief ~ gobble ~ right

They were submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

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The nightstand on her husband's side of the bed held another bank card and driver's license from a woman she didn't know and didn't recognize. Third time, now. Third time was definitely not the charm here.

She'd been able to write off the other two as some sort of mistake. The first one she found was an accident. She was actually honestly looking for some tums or something that might help with a raging case of heartburn she had. She knew he kept some in the nightstand in case it woke him up at night. She'd forgotten all about the heartburn when she found the ID and card though.

She'd sort of defaulted to thinking it was a mistress who'd, she didn't know, left it with him? For some reason? Or something he found when he went out drinking after work and planned to return? It didn't really make sense to her no matter how she tried to frame it at the time but who would have thought...well what she thought now felt insane to be honest.

She hadn't found a way to bring it up to him yet without risking one of his little episodes when that woman's name was in the news a couple days later as having disappeared on am early morning run. She was pretty sure it was the same woman because the ID pic had kind of been emblazoned in her memory and it was very similar to the photo shown on the news. Same long dark hair, same piercing blue eyes... Neck tattoos and deep red lipstick. This woman was just his type. Not herself though. Oh no the woman he married was petite and blonde and quiet and wore clothes 2 sizes too big... When she accidentally found his porn stash on their computer that time it had all been women who looked like the one on the news.

Anyway that had been 2 years ago. She'd looked ever so often in his nightstand and then one day last year after she'd come back from visiting her parents upstate, there was another ID and card. And another news story. Another woman missing after a night out with friends in the downtown area near the art school campus.

And now 6 months later, here was another one. This time she hadn't been with her parents though. This time, she'd been in the hospital from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy that had nearly killed her. She'd spent nearly 2 weeks laid up in that bed alone and miserable and wishing she would have died.

He'd shown up once, flipped through his phone for the entire half hour he bothered to be there, then left again without so much as an "I love you."

It hadn't always been like this. She really didn't think it had. Meeting him had felt so serendipitous...a fairytale. She'd often wondered if she was dreaming the sweetest dreams imaginable in the beginning. He brought her flowers. He made her feel like she was the only woman on earth. They'd dated for a year before he asked her to marry him, and at the time, there wasn't a single red flag she could name. He was attentive and supportive. He didn't go cold on her back then. He'd been passionate and gentle and couldn't get enough of her it seemed.

Now though she wondered what he was doing on those weekends he took boys trips with old college chums and didn't speak to her for days not even to check in. Were there actually business trips he went on and came back with a cut under his eye or scratches on his arms? Things lined up now in a way they hadn't back then. Why would she suspect him of anything at all when he'd gone so far to make her feel loved and important?

But then the wedding happened and things...things were off. He'd taken a job transfer without talking to her about it and basically forced them to move almost overnight away from her family and friends and her teaching job. He'd wanted her to wait on finding a job to see if maybe they could try for a baby only, well, he wasn't doing much trying and hadn't for years now. Their 5 year anniversary was coming up and she could count on her hands how many times they'd been intimate in that time. But he'd wanted her almost every day before the marriage and the move. Some nights he didn't even come home. There she'd be with dinner ready and plated looking like a dumbass with no work from him. She'd learned not to even bother calling. He wouldn't answer, and he'd accuse her of being clingy and insecure about it when he finally did show up.

She hadn't been to a single work function or let his coworkers. He never bothered to come back home with her and controlled when and how long she would go. If she wanted to stay 3 days he would insist on 2 weeks and not a minute sooner, but there were also times he'd forbidden her to go.

It's like the dream prince she married turned into a controlling nightmare with the flip of a switch when he said "I do."

So of course she'd long suspected affairs. She was sure he was at least having one night stands. But these IDs and bank cards? She understood now this was something much, much darker and she couldn't ignore it any longer. What would people think of her? That she must have known? That she turned a blind eye to it all? The thought of it made her throw up what little breakfast she'd been able to eat. She still wasn't feeling 100% after the lonely hospital stay... And she definitely hadn't had any more support once she'd gotten home.

What was she even going to tell police? My husband had this woman's ID but I was too scared to keep it? It's happened 3 times at least but I was too scared to call? She slid the items in a Ziploc bag, walked out to her car, and knew she'd never ever be able to set one foot back in that house. She'd have to figure out the rest along the way.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

The Price Of Wishing

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

pickles ~ summer ~ thunderstorm ~ puppy

They were submitted by: https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

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It was a summer night just like this one when I came here. A thunderstorm just like this one. If I believed in portents, I would definitely be a little concerned. But I don't. So it's fine. It's finally going to be fine.

In less than a day I will have done my time, and I'll be free. Sort of free. You don't live out a 400 year sentence for the kinds of crimes I was found guilty for without it being, you know, a big deal. Everyone seems to know who I am. I'll never get a minute's peace, but I'll finally be out of here. I'll finally move outside of these gray walls and the parade of hoodlums that come in and out changing styles, changing names, changing crimes but never really being different people. 1997 was a good year. pre-9/11. I mean things weren't great before that either but inevitably things hit a pretty steep decline afterwards. 10 years, 20, 50,100... All the milestones came and went. Wardens changed. Rules changed. The outside changed... And here I still am, still living in 1997 in my head and being pushed out into whatever awaits me in 2397. It's a tenuous freedom, but it is freedom.

When I accepted immortality as my gift from that djinn I didn't expect to spend eternity in a box watching as humans devoured each other metaphorically and then literally. I didn't expect to be handed a 400 year sentence for feeding a hunger I didn't ask for in the first place.

A hunger that's been satisfied by involuntary donations from the prisoners here once the cops figured out what happened when they denied what I am..

The last night.

I've missed my kids lives. Their kids lives. Their great grandkids lives. Do I even have family left? I've missed world war 3. 4. Nuclear fallout. An apocalypse and rebirth. Revolutions that won and revolutionaries stomped out by their own people's greed. I don't get to watch the news anymore. Not after my last freakout that left a few screws dead. I don't know what it looks like except words from the kids coming in here, a revolving door of outside culture. I hardly recognize the language anymore.

400 years.

4 years of this place is enough to drive some men insane, and I've been here 400. Am I even getting out of has my grasp of reality completely obliterated? Sometimes I don't even know if anything I know to be true actually is the truth. Sometimes in the dark of night when nothing is quiet, after all the sleeplessness, I don't know if I haven't made it all up.

And then I get hungry and for at least those few moments that hunger is being sated with pulse against teeth, I see it all so clearly.

Hours. Hours left.

I miss pickles I can't have anymore. I miss the smell of puppy breath right before they lick your face and fill you with joy. Are those things even real? Am I really? What's the price of 400 years? How can you leave one world and re-enter another you don't recognize anymore and be ok?

But I won't be here... At least there's that?

I won't be fed anymore either.

I won't be fed.

And I'll be so hungry.

So

Hungry

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:



Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Premonition

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

persevere ~ pebble ~ swamp ~ steps ~ annoying ~ foreshadowing

It was submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/ 

Magnolia

 

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

yoga studio ~ magnolia tree ~ takeout lunch ~ perishable ~ wind chill factor ~ follow through

submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/      

Thanksgiving

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: 

money ~ turkey ~ clock ~ light ~ garbage

They were submitted by: http://www.renasworld.com/

The title may be a bit misleading. 

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She picks up the garbage strewn around the room and chunks it in the bin. It’s been a long day, and the last thing she wants to do is clean up, but she has a compulsive streak that won’t let her get any rest until everything is set back in its place and the cleaning is all done. The turkey or what’s left of it has already been tucked inside plastic bags and set in the refrigerator for tomorrow’s lunch, so all that’s left to do is wipe the counters and get to the mound of dirty dishes in the sink. It might take two runs in the dishwasher to clean them all.

She stands at the sink washing the leftover grime down the drain lost in thought over the day--the way the tension always hung in the room whenever the family was together, no affection or warmth. Everyone was mechanical. A family of androids not programmed with any semblance of human emotion.

Sometimes she lays in bed at night staring at the wave of royal blue light coming from the digital numbers on her alarm clock on the little table beside her wondering if she actually knows what love feels like. Has she ever been loved? Does she know how to love? Is that a natural occurrence or does love have to be nutured? She thinks maybe you have to be loved to learn how to love and marvels at how broken she is, how desperate to feel something, anything other than numbness.

There’s not enough money in all the world, she guesses, that could fix that sort of void, to breech that harbor of nothingness. How do you teach someone to love who has never felt it?

She finishes stacking the first load of dishes in the washer, turns it on, and looks around the kitchen. She takes her purple Scotch Brite sponge and a bottle of Fantatik and goes to work on the counter and table washing away every speck that is out of place. She leans back against the counter to take in the fruits of her labor, her sparkling kitchen. If only her soul could be feel this clean, this fresh and shiny… if she could take a sponge and soak up all self-hatred from years of never feeling good enough maybe she could start anew.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:



http://bakinginatornado.com Baking In A Tornado

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/ Spatulas on Parade

http://themomisodes.com The Momisodes

http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/ Sparkly Poetic Weirdo

http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm

http://www.renasworld.com/ Rena’s World

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com Never Ever Give Up Hope http://dinoheromommy.com/ Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/ The Bergham Chronicles

http://eileensperpetuallybusy.blogspot.com/ Eileen’s Perpetually Busy

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/ Confessions of a part-time working mom

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com Someone Else’s Genius

http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com Climaxed

http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com The Angrivated Mom