#ThursThreads, week 542

Prompt: https://siobhanmuir.com/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week-542/

It’s not that simple.

I mean, it always is from your perspective.

Can’t you just, you ask, or maybe wouldn’t it be easier if you didn’t do that?

I appreciate that, I could say, I’ve never thought of that before.

No. No. No! Shut up, for Christ’s sake.

Do you even hear yourself? This isn’t about you. Not this.

Not everything is fucking about you.

Goddamnit!

So no. It’s not that simple. I’m fucking miserable like this.

Don’t you think if I could choose to not be like this, I would? If there was a switch or a choice or a way that didn’t involve medication and years of pain?

The only simple things are the moments.

The moment I wake up even though I’d rather not.

The moment I smile on the Zoom call.

The moment I do the dishes. The laundry.

The moment I take a shower.

The moments I breathe.

The moments I try so very hard to believe that I’m the person other people see, worthy of keeping around, and not the one I see.

That’s the choice. That’s what’s simple.

What, you expected an epiphany? A resolution?

I’m choosing to breathe this moment. That’s going to have to be good enough.

206 words
@drmag00

#ThursThreads, week 540

Prompt: https://siobhanmuir.com/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week-540

In my dream, I’m on my way to work at a place that echoes only sadness from my past. The hallways are too narrow, the lighting dim. I shouldn’t be there – I’ve moved on, they’ve moved on – but as is so often true in dream logic, we’ve been drawn back together by some dark animating force.

I talk to people who I once would have called friends, but no longer. Their words are cordial, but the look in their eyes echoes the drumbeat in my mind. “You left us, remember. You’re lucky we’re taking you back at all.

“And you’ll never be one of us again. If you ever truly were.”

Even in my dreams, I don’t belong.

And then I’m outside, walking across the space that should be green, but instead of a place of life, sorrow is engraved in every blade of grass. This isn’t the brown of winter, it’s the rot of decay.

Tears come, but I can’t shed them. They take root in my stomach and bloom tendrils of agony throughout my body. I feel like my chest has been filled by some cruel ichor that stops my breathing, stops my thinking, stops my motion.

I awaken slowly, as if clawing my way out of the depths, my ascent hampered by the weight in my chest. The mask that helps me breathe overnight becomes a shackle, and I pull it from my face with disgust. 

Even when I’m awake, I don’t belong.

#ThursThreads, week 539

Prompt: https://siobhanmuir.com/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week-539/

I made it easier for you to cut me out of your life. I stopped using TikTok. I don’t go to that bar anymore, the one we used to go to every Friday night, the one where you first told me that you love me. 

I don’t go there anymore. 

I found this place across town. It’s nicer and almost no one pukes in the toilets around closing time. They don’t know me here as half of something. To them, I’m just Paul, the kinda sad guy at the bar who they’d ask to be on their trivia team if I’d ever look up from my phone. 

I don’t go to the Whole Foods on 10th street, or the delicatessen on 8th – you know, the one that puts pickles on the table to snack on and where I decided I’d ask you to marry me. 

I’m guessing you don’t go there anymore either, not after that fight we had that led to the waitress dropping a tray of food on the owner. But just in case you do, I don’t. 

I mapped out the city, indicating the likelihood of you going to various parks or restaurants or stores and when you might go. I removed all of my social media accounts and told our mutual friends to never mention my name again. 

You’d have been better off if you’d never met me. If I hadn’t hurt you so badly. If I hadn’t existed. 

What’s past is prologue, they say. 

Goodbye. 

#ThursThreads, week 538

Prompt: https://siobhanmuir.com/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week-538/

Sally thumbed off her phone, cutting off the rant on her voicemail mid-word. There used to be love in those voicemails. Love and thoughtfulness and a profound level of insight into matters mundane and esoteric. But now all of it was gone.

When she’d met Tommy her junior year, he was triple majoring in chemistry, philosophy, and art, somehow fitting 33 credit hours into each semester. She’d been at the top of her class everywhere she’d gone, but Tommy was in a world all his own. And when he’d seen her on the quad that September day, he’d created a place for her in it that fit her like a comfy sweatshirt.

No matter what he was doing, he always found time for her. He’d sketch while they were talking or trace chemical formulas on her skin when they were making love. He wove worlds of wonder around her that dared to expose the secrets of the universe, of the human condition, and of why burritos at 2 am were the food of the gods all at the same time, all while making her feel like the center of all things.

She’d had forty years with that version of Tommy, and they were beyond her dreams. But whatever magic had allowed his brain to soar into the heart of the sun and come out better for it had started to run out.

Now there was only chaos and anger. Sally wanted it to mean something. 

But it didn’t. Not anymore.