Can It Be Saved?

This was a ten minute write on the prompt: Can it be saved? Write about something ruined by water. After the group write I continued it on my own.


I don't know why but I was set on walking to the reading. I knew I was going to be late if I did, but it seemed important. I wanted to clear my mind, feel the swift movement of my body along the concrete sidewalk. My journal in my backpack, I set out. Not five minutes later I felt the first drop. I walked faster, hoping to outrun it. Within seconds it was a downpour, soaking me completely from head to toe. I was too concerned with my appearance to remember my journal, getting quickly soaked under the thin fabric of my bag.

Arriving at the reading, door creaking and banging disruptively as a man clad in orange stood at the podium releasing words in a breathy voice. Everyone glanced back at me with judgement in their eyes as I mouthed an apology.

It was only when they introduced me and I pulled out the wet journal did I realize that I had never had the foresight to invest in no-smear pens and that every word had become an abstract watercolor painting. I stood, dripping on the stage, the bright lights in my eyes and my rippled, dripping puddle of a journal before me, wondering what I would say.

"Tonight," I began, figuring it best to stay present, "I live, a creature of light and rain, moon and muck, sugar and stalactites in the dim clotted mossy walls of the cave of my life."

The crowd was still. I took a breath.

"I stand here, enlightened, humbled, knee deep in an ache for the nameless. With a hope for the hopeless, holding in my hand coupons for a store that is not yet built. Today I cut my hair and the remnants of myself on the kitchen linoleum lay curled, arrested, frozen in hieroglyphics that I could not read. I swept it up and held it in my open palms, a tenderness rushing through me as if awaiting the release of a child.

'I am a lawn chair, I am a cherry tree, I am a reckless thought escaping your mouth in song. A wish, a leaf upon the water, a weightlessness, a cringe.

'I am a scent that is so pungent that your first reaction is to inhale deeply but I am only the reek of piss behind the dumpster.

'I am the blanket that your mother knitted in your favorite colors, spread upon the worn fabric of that thrift store couch.

'I am a moment that you notice only for its mundane serenity- the cat on the couch, the click of the mouse under the warm palm of your husband's hand, the dark breeze outside stirring branches, the silence, the garlic on your fingers, the sudden captured aliveness of this, your life, throbbing and awake, its beginning and end held in perfect balance on opposite sides of Now."

Polite applause, and I made my way back to my damp folding chair. Not a bad improv, I thought. I hoped there was a snack table somewhere.