by trentm32 » 10/5/2004, 12:42 pm
I got off work early today, and hung out at the coffee house for a half hour or so and wrote this. Dig it...
...
“Greatest Fear”
“I’m leaving in an hour,” the boy said. The girl didn’t lift her head at first, but finally rose to say “You’ll be back.” The boy slowly nodded, and lowered his eyes to the floor again. After a few more moments, he said, “This time tomorrow I’ll be in east Manhattan.” She kept her eyes down, “And a week from that, you’ll be on your way back home.”
They just sat there for a long while; her on the couch, him sitting Indian style in the floor, close beside. After finally building up enough courage, he asked her, “What’s your greatest fear?” She lifted her head and looked him in the eyes. Such soft, brown eyes. After thinking for just a second, she replied: “A world with no music.” She lowered her head back toward her magazine as she asked “What’s yours?”
On that cue, he gently lifted himself off of the floor and sat beside the girl on the sofa. “My greatest fear is that one day I’ll finally have a chance to be heard, but I won’t have anything left to say. There are so many people, listened to by so many more people, who don’t really have anything to say. I’m just afraid that, someday if I have my chance, it will have taken so much of me to get to that point that there won’t be anything beautiful left when I make it."
By now she had lifted her eyes from her magazine, and was paying attention. “Worse than that,” he continued, as he placed his nervous hand upon hers, “I’m afraid that I will have something to say, but I won’t have the nerve to say it.” He squeezed her fingers in around his a little tighter. “Or there’ll be something that I’m dying to do, and I won’t have the nerve to do it. One of those things that your mind tells you that you can’t do, but your heart keeps pushing you along.” By now there was a tear creeping down his cheek.
“I love you,” he said. He noticed her lips begin to quiver; she didn’t know what to say. The boy slowly stood up, her hand still in his. “I have to go, call me if you want to… talk.” All she could do was nod, as tears began to well behind her eyes. The boy forced a weak smile, and let her hand fall from his as he walked out of the door.
...
so, what you guys think?
"When looking up there, I just felt whole, like I belonged. Like one day I too would shine my most brilliant. Sitting there also made me think about sitting through services at my little country church back home. About that never-changing congregation of the same sixty-seven people and everyone has known you since before you were born. Now, out here in the real world, everything just seemed more vivid than when I used to sit in that little pew. That pew that was now so, so far away from where I was. I feared I had somehow left God behind there, too. I feared he was somehow just sitting there, saving my seat on the fifth pew from the front row, just waiting on me to come back. I left so quickly, I worried that he may not have noticed I was gone. And, now, I’m just too far away to find. So he’s just sitting there, patiently waiting on me to come back. I closed my eyes and prayed a moment. I hoped more than anything that he could still hear me." -an excerpt from my novella, A Sea of Fallen Leaves.
<a href="http://www.soundthesirens.com">SoundTheSirens.com</a>