Monday November 11th, 2013

The exercise:

Write something about: nothing.

Relatively quiet day around here. That's certainly not a complaint.

Mine:

I was born into nothing. It was my constant companion throughout my childhood, never far away. Always ready to provide reminders of how little I had.

How little I mattered.

My street, littered with broken-down cars and forgotten trash, was a dead-end. Just to drive the point home, or so I always thought. I don't know if things would have been any different had I lived on a thoroughfare. Probably not.

Maybe with a few more functioning vehicles going by each day I'd have been run over before I got to here and now. Wishful thinking, I know.

I will return to nothing one day. Swallowed up by the earth, forever lost in the dark. It is unlikely that anyone will mourn me. But they will know who I was, what I did. I will be remembered.

Tonight... I will make sure that my name means something.

4 comments:

Greg said...

That's quite a bleak piece today -- clearly you having a quiet day gets your mind filled with odd ideas! I really like the third and fourth paragraphs, the descriptions there lift the story that's being told. And then there's your suggestive punchline :)

I meant to say: if you're interested I'm posting my NaNoWriMo efforts on my blog. In order to keep the posts there a reasonable length they're running behind where I'm actually up to, which is abour 27,000 words.

Nothing
No words, no thought, never mind.
No gentle touch, nothing kind.
No peace, and the hurting never stops.
No beliefs, and the other shoe never drops.

No steps to take, nowhere to go.
Nothing for me, but who wants to know?
No darkness, no light, and now no eyes,
No escape from the whispering and the lies.

No, don't! No, please! Not again!
No ending of this source of pain.
No hope, no change, not left behind,
Only prisoned inside this mind.

Anonymous said...

Eek, you guys!

nothin'

three days ago
the labor'd begun,
twelve hours of somethin'
but no, it was nothin'

two days ago
the pains continued
on again, off again
but no, it was nothin'

one day ago
they came in again
long showers and back rubs
but still there was nothin'

one minute ago
the pains - they were back
this sure ain't nothin' now
this babe'll be born!

morganna said...

Buddhist Nothing
emptiness
lack of suffering
beyond peace
beyond pain
all accepted

Marc said...

Greg - yes, I've seen the updates in my blog feed (since I am, in fact, following it - despite my complete lack of comments!). I will find/make time to sit down and catch up with it.

Though I suspect I won't want to do that too late at night...

Fantastically bleak entry from you today. I should have known this prompt might inspire such dreary entries... it did for me, after all.

Writebite - oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I can imagine how on edge everyone must be at this point. I'm still grateful that Kat had no false labours - when things started, they started for real.

Morganna - ah, a nice serene entry to top things off. Much appreciated :)