Workshop #2

Prompt: "You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road." -Richard Price

Write a short monologue using detailed imagery, as the quote suggests, to convey something about a relationship that was severed.

Are you watching me?

Have you been watching, as we plucked the spines from your bookshelf and filled boxes with your condemnation and exiled them from our lives? Have you been listening, as we picked through your pristine dishes, the teapots you never used, protecting them from chipping even as we disparaged the choice to bring them into the home? Before you left, before you raged not against the dying of the light, your rattle evaporating as the echo hovered over your chapped lips, did you know I loved you as much as I did not understand you? Can you see it, that photo of you on my dresser, too young to hurt like you did and would – before you could experience the pain of the world that would make you hard and unforgiving and unforgivable? Do you care that my breath comes more easily without having to smile at you when I am worn? Do you hear me singing in the hallway where I once crept like a beggar through unlit streets?

Are you watching me now?