I’m sharing a quick writing prompt with you all today! I know I’ve been so absent on SGL for the past month. Here’s to hoping I can start getting back into a regular posting schedule. I hope you enjoy this.
With a quick glance at the gray sky as I pulled the door shut behind me, I decided that I just might have enough time before the storm hit. I’d not been able to make it the past week and it gnawed at me. Chancing getting caught in the rain far outweighed the knowledge that I’d not sleep well tonight if I missed this opportunity to sneak away.
As usual, my steps were heavy even though they were quick and long. My only thought was to get there. My path wasn’t the shortest route though. First I needed to stop and get some flowers. It was only right, to take flowers with me as an offering. Before long, I spied the small house that sat on the corner lot. It was of no particular interest, being a bit shabby and bleak. But the owner faithfully tended a garden and that was what I was aiming for. I casually glanced around me, but the neighborhood was empty.
Just like it always was.
Hopping over the low fence, I stooped to pick a small handful of lilies, asters and roses. Really, I didn’t care what they were, the point was something beautiful and bright. I adjusted the flowers in my hand, deciding I needed a few more and bent low again.
“You might as well take those last few lilies.”
I shot up at the sound of the raspy voice mere feet from me. I stared at the stooped man who looked as if he’d eaten something sour. His lips turned up on one side and his eyes were slits.
“I’m sorry. I – ” I faded out as I realized that I couldn’t tell him what I was doing.
“You’re stealing my best beauties, just as you always do. Why don’t you go to a florist shop, instead of destroying my garden? Hmm?”
I hung my head, eyeing the flowers in my hand. A raindrop hit the petal of one, trailing down to land on my thumb. I looked up at the sky and noticed the old man doing the same. “I’m sorry. I -” I tried again, but the words got stuck and my hand clenched around the stems.
He squinted at me, and then muttering , reached inside his front door. I took a step back, thinking of making a run for it when he pulled an umbrella out. “Let’s go deliver those before it’s a deluge out here.” His words stopped my feet.
Was he really saying what I thought he was? “But you can’t come with me.”
“Son, you’ve been stealing my flowers for nigh on the whole summer, so I suppose I deserve to see this pretty girl that has warranted such flower theft.”
I followed his shuffling gait out of the small yard and accepted the umbrella he held out for the both of us. We walked with no other noises but his occasional grunts and the click of his cane on the sidewalk. As we drew closer to my destination, I tried to come up with how to tell him just where we were going. I kept my eyes low, but I knew the instant he figured it out. The tapping of his cane stopped and eventually so did he. I paused just ahead of him, looking back. I begged him silently not to say any of the trite things people feel the need to say at a time like this. I begged him to understand.
And he did. The sorrow in his eyes told me.
He started walking again, but he remained silent, merely joining me under the umbrella again, his cane tapping out a rhythm.
He stayed with me until I stopped before a stone laid flat in the green grass, the patter of raindrops on the umbrella sounding out the beat of my heart. I handed him the handle, then knelt to replace the dead flowers with the new. I hung my head, not caring that I was getting soaked from kneeling on the wet ground. A gentle hand cupped my shoulder,
“The grief never leaves, son. The grief never leaves.”
Here’s the prompt that I started this from: “Sometimes I steal flowers from your garden on my way to the cemetery, but today you’ve caught me and have demanded to come with me to make sure the ‘girl is pretty enough to warrant flower theft’ and I’m trying to figure out how to break it to you that we’re on our way to a graveyard”
Thanks for stopping by SGL. If you want to check it out, I’m on Instagram fairly regularly.
~Laura
the start of a good life 