Tags
agnosia, Art, fiction, literature, monkeypuzzlepress.com, nonfiction, novel, publication, publishing, reading, writer, Writing
Hi. I say
Hi. He says
At dusk in the shallows, the red shadow of the ferry rises up through the tides.
How are you? I say
How are you? He says
Silence.
The book. He says
The book. I say and hope that he understands
The rise and fall of the tides coincides with the coming of the mayflies. Small, black boat-shaped dots and oil slicks – beautiful iridescent hues. The lake fills the gutted bellies of its shop with sand, shells, scales and anything else offered, dropped in, lost. Everything outside becomes buried things.
Keep them in. Keep them in.
What? He says
Nothing. I say Nothing
There are no clouds on an island – just the mist off of the water – thickened. The edges are sharp, fine. It cuts itself into layers, rests and then pushes the air out. There are little deaths every night and every morning. Condensed water and oil – the smell of her, masked by the lights of the city. Its edges pulse in dark rings, a cloud of ash, pools of hot steel.
Tomorrow? He says
Tomorrow. I say and leave him on the docks.
…
Perhaps this needs context.
This is a section taken from a current project, Agnosia. The main character is engaging in a phone conversation with her husband, a man whom she has left though she hasn’t quite realized it yet. Leaving happens first in the heart before it reaches the mind. As she speaks these words, she is sitting in her grandfather’s living room, listening to his death-bed ramblings and chocked memories of lives he has and hasn’t lead. She is 2000 miles away, pretending to write a novel, and at once lost and hopelessly found, drowning in a sea of questions and uncertainty. Unable to know or see what she wants or even, who she is, she succumbs to a kind of numbness that consumes the novel. Her present slips into her grandfather’s past, evoking his memories of the lake, the small town on an island, the fishing, and the cabin in the woods, to describe the storm that she finds herself lost within.
There will be more! Thank you for reading.