This is a piece written for my Fiction writing class I’m currently enrolled in. In this class, we’re required to do a variety of writing exercises to help us expand our imagination, and strengthen our skill set. I’ll be posting them on my website here as the class continues so you all have the opportunity to see my writing in a different realm/light. I hope you enjoy~!
Prompt: Scan back over your life and think of things that have stuck in your mind, but for no obvious reason, render them precisely on the page using concrete details, beginning with the phrase, “I don’t remember why.”
I don’t know why I remember losing my memory…the day I found myself scanning for details through muddles of menial, pointless information. I sat at my desk, my headphones practically glued to the inside of my ears, and I let my music do the thinking for me, the feeling for me. I don’t remember why the thoughts wouldn’t come to me, or why the pencil in my hand felt as heavy as stone, or why the plastic edging around it was the only thing that seemed to make sense in the world. I don’t remember why the room felt so dark, regardless of all the lights being on, the lights that glared at me, stared at me. I don’t remember why the dust in the air settled so neatly around each one of my fingers, my left palm having not left my desk for approximately two hours and thirty-three minutes. I don’t remember why I continued to stare at a blank piece of paper, which begged for me to reflect even an ounce of myself on the page. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t me. I felt as if each one of my muscles had been filled with sand, the grains seeping into blood cells and tissue fibers, grounding me to this immobile state in my computer chair – in the light that my eyes couldn’t see, the words that my pencil couldn’t write.
But then you walked in – a somber smile written across your multiple intricacies. You glanced at the empty bottle of wine next to me, evaluating my alcohol-filled tears and my sand-filled limbs with a grace that I could never hope to know. And then you embraced me…an ocean that washed away the shore, wave by wave.