Thursday June 26th, 2014

The exercise:

Write about something that was: left unsaid.

We can thank Greg for this one, in a roundabout sort of way. His comment on yesterday's post inspired me to share my piece from another point of view, and this was the prompt that came out of that.

My parents arrived safe and sound this afternoon. It took Max about two hours to get fully comfortable with them, and then the performance began in earnest. By the end of the night he was bossing them around and laughing like a maniac, which was just lovely to see.

Mine:

I can still remember the smell of his coffee. Though I rented the second floor of a cramped house I could always tell when he walked past as he made his way to the river, even if I wasn't sitting by my kitchen window in the morning. Which I often was.

Okay, almost always.

I suppose you could say I was waiting for him. Not that I ever meant to. It just sort of seemed to happen that I would be near that window every morning around the same time. And he would come along like clockwork at 7:15; he could have been my alarm, if he'd only have knocked at my door instead of continuing on.

Instead I would grab my purse and follow after him. On those mornings that spare change jangled in my coat pocket I bought my own coffee, but all too often there was not a forint leftover after rent and meals had been accounted for. Times were tight back then.

So I drank from his cup. He never seemed to mind, though I wondered if he only did it out of pity for my poverty. I never asked because I feared his answer.

So much was left unsaid between us. So much I wish I could have told him, confessed to him. But one word I never spoke haunts me most of all. Just one simple word.

I could not have seen my arrest coming, but if I had and there was time for but one single thing to be done before I was locked in that miserable cell... I would have said goodbye.