riotheclown (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
riotheclown) wrote2014-10-26 08:40 am
riotheclown) wrote2014-10-26 08:40 am
Entry tags:
Brigit's Flame, October, Week Four
Title: Balance and Imbalance
Author: Urb-banal
Word Count: 460
Warnings: no
Genre: Fiction contained in epistolary
Prompt: "It comforts me to dress him warmly."
Dear Brigit,
I remembered writing this. I have been so out of sorts and busy to boot with life stuff I hope you don't mind my submitting it again. It was many years ago now. The line in the prompt got me caught up in all of the losses that are woven through this story and the process(es) that I went through to write it, piling up aromas and music, falling into chaos and coming out, finished, like freshly folded laundry...
Balance and Imbalance
I turn the collar on the shirt I have just ironed and button it on the hanger. The dry warm smell of ironed cotton catches my breath and I swallow a lump in my throat.
It is a man’s shirt. It has hung in my closet for over a year un-ironed.
I like to listen to Mozart when I iron. Right now I am listening to “Don Giovanni”. I have no idea what the words mean, but I love to hear the tenor. I have gone crazy for opera. It’s like craving chocolate. It is probably equally bad for me. I have dripped tears onto the ironing board the whole time listening to it.
I used to like R&B and Rock and Roll. It was sexy to dance and clean.
I take another shirt from the closet and place it on the board. It was ironed but it has wrinkled from having been pushed so far back in the closet. As I spritz it with water, a faint reminder of his deodorant rises and the iron hisses over it. The fabric has held his aroma until now. It seems unfair that it is so intimate with him still.
Giovanni is singing to a woman. Her voice is almost shrill. She is imploring him. He is mocking her. He is imploring her, she is mocking him. They sing together. The age old story; it is easy to understand even without knowing the language.
Soon I find there is nothing left to iron.
Sitting on the bed I can see the careful balance of our clothes, his on the left and mine on the right. I wrap my arms around his clothes as they hang there, so carefully ironed and put away.
The opera is at its finale. There are horns, solemn and definite. The refrain returns with violins and insistence. The horns say “It is over.”
I am placing his clothes in the box.
The careful balance of my life is gone and I teeter on the edge.
***
When I wrote this I was imagining a widow, finally coming to terms with packing up her husband's clothes to donate to Goodwill.
I remembered, oh years ago, packing to move and discovering an old coat my (now ex) husband had worn when we first met. It felt as if the coat held on to that first intimate embrace and I hid myself in the closet and had a good cry over it. That memory stood in stark contrast to what we were going through at the time.
I also know that, when I remember him as he was then, I always dress him warmly.
Yours truly, Urby
Author: Urb-banal
Word Count: 460
Warnings: no
Genre: Fiction contained in epistolary
Prompt: "It comforts me to dress him warmly."
Dear Brigit,
I remembered writing this. I have been so out of sorts and busy to boot with life stuff I hope you don't mind my submitting it again. It was many years ago now. The line in the prompt got me caught up in all of the losses that are woven through this story and the process(es) that I went through to write it, piling up aromas and music, falling into chaos and coming out, finished, like freshly folded laundry...
Balance and Imbalance
I turn the collar on the shirt I have just ironed and button it on the hanger. The dry warm smell of ironed cotton catches my breath and I swallow a lump in my throat.
It is a man’s shirt. It has hung in my closet for over a year un-ironed.
I like to listen to Mozart when I iron. Right now I am listening to “Don Giovanni”. I have no idea what the words mean, but I love to hear the tenor. I have gone crazy for opera. It’s like craving chocolate. It is probably equally bad for me. I have dripped tears onto the ironing board the whole time listening to it.
I used to like R&B and Rock and Roll. It was sexy to dance and clean.
I take another shirt from the closet and place it on the board. It was ironed but it has wrinkled from having been pushed so far back in the closet. As I spritz it with water, a faint reminder of his deodorant rises and the iron hisses over it. The fabric has held his aroma until now. It seems unfair that it is so intimate with him still.
Giovanni is singing to a woman. Her voice is almost shrill. She is imploring him. He is mocking her. He is imploring her, she is mocking him. They sing together. The age old story; it is easy to understand even without knowing the language.
Soon I find there is nothing left to iron.
Sitting on the bed I can see the careful balance of our clothes, his on the left and mine on the right. I wrap my arms around his clothes as they hang there, so carefully ironed and put away.
The opera is at its finale. There are horns, solemn and definite. The refrain returns with violins and insistence. The horns say “It is over.”
I am placing his clothes in the box.
The careful balance of my life is gone and I teeter on the edge.
***
When I wrote this I was imagining a widow, finally coming to terms with packing up her husband's clothes to donate to Goodwill.
I remembered, oh years ago, packing to move and discovering an old coat my (now ex) husband had worn when we first met. It felt as if the coat held on to that first intimate embrace and I hid myself in the closet and had a good cry over it. That memory stood in stark contrast to what we were going through at the time.
I also know that, when I remember him as he was then, I always dress him warmly.
Yours truly, Urby