Writing Workshop 4

[hustling_rube]

Hello, all. Our next Writing Workshop may seem deceptively simple. Once again, I nicked from Brian Kiteley:
Loving. Write about a person you love. This apparently simple instruction may be more difficult than you think. What makes us love people? How do we avoid being sentimental when describing the attributes that make someone loveable? You

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[m_pinocchio]

The most appropriate thing about it was how it happened. Look, here's how it was: I was lost and confused and close to the point of giving up completely. In fact, maybe if I had then things would have been easier, but the fact remains that I didn't, not that way. Here's how it was: I was hurt. The bookshelf happened to be there and it seemed like the thing to do at the time. And then there she was, and she touched me. That in itself was so strange: to be touched, because someone wants to touch you. She wanted to extend her personal sphere to mine and join the two for that few seconds of contact. Mindblowing. And then, of course, the seconds turned into minutes, which later became hours and days and weeks to bring us up to now, but then it was just that short span of time and an eclipsed span of distance. Fingers on skin. Nervous signals. Simple. It was supposed to be simple. Even the truth of who she was seemed simple at the time. Somewhere underneath everything I was remembering that nothing is ever really simple and that maybe something was beginning that I couldn't contain, but just then... fingers on skin.

Fingers everywhere.

I thought it would be one time. Maybe there would be more, maybe not. It wasn't supposed to matter.

Here's how it was: I was lost again and really hurt this time, no bumped head for me. Blood and roaring darkness and the thing that brought me out was the memory of her fingers, her hair, a ring of tattooed flowers. She was kind to me; that fact is all-important, because kindness is an alien thing. Like love it defies logic and reason. It simply is, and she was and is, and it pulled me out of the dark. Somewhere in the back of everything maybe he was pushing me. If he were here this is what he would want, I know it.

I turn to you now, Goddess, lover, friend, more than all that combined. Will you be my anchor, when there is no one around to hold me down?

It's never been like this before.

New life and rebirth, that's what you said. Here's how it is: Your body is a circle and mine is a map. Every line has a story, every scar has a song. What I'm learning, what you're teaching me, is that they don't have to be chains as well. They don't have to hold me down, not if you can.

What all of you (and here I turn to the audience again and address them, their faces hidden behind bright footlights) have to understand is that I don't understand this. It makes no sense to me. She's beautiful, of course she is, if I were to be honest without fear of being overly sentimental I would say that she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. That makes sense enough; it's the proximity of her, the reality of my hands on her that makes no sense at all. Waking up next to her makes no sense at all. The sound of her laugh makes perfect sense; the fact that I made it sound does not. The upward curve of her smile doesn't cry against logic, but the fact that I put it there does. Here's how it is: I don't understand anything. She makes a child of me, and what I don't understand is that I don't mind that.

So I can't explain it. I can't make anyone else see what I see. All I can do is say what I see and hope that some sense of it, some of the sense I can't find, gets across.

Here's how it is, and now I turn to you again: I love you. I don't need to understand it. It simply is and that's enough. In the end, maybe it is just that simple, simple as fingers on skin. I love you and I'll go on loving you until I can't anymore. That's all the sense I need.