untitled story (in three parts)

where does fiction go once it has been forgotten?

i found some very old fiction writing deep in my google docs. i had written it, a few years ago. maybe it could have been something. maybe it would have been nothing. it was forgotten, and never amounted to anything. upon current discovery, however, there is something that charms me in its unfinished, beginning of a thought, state. like going for a walk and happening on some graffiti on an old building; i was here, i left my mark, and i exited; leaving my mark, getting it out of me, was all i had to do, that i have now forgotten does not matter.

i’m now copy-and-pasting it below:

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1.

a woman is sitting on the rocky shore of the creek with her feet dangling timidly in the water. the water is ice cold and has turned her ankles a raw salmon color. she is smoking a cigarette and hating the taste. she continues to smoke it. compulsively. the smoke glides across her cheeks, into her hair. It’s smell will linger but she won’t notice. the wind is blowing her hair across her face and she makes no movements to readjust it out of her eyes. she takes another puff of the cigarette. and another.

~~~

2.

the woman walks through town. she is hoping to catch an eye. any eye. she wants a sudden submission of eye contact. she wants to fall into someone so as to fall out of herself. or to fall into someone so that she falls so deeply into herself so that she can finally discover the part of herself that she has been looking for.

the clicks of her heels on the sidewalk seem to be the only concrete proof of her existence. she is waiting for recognition from a passerby; for affirmation. with each approaching figure, she desperately Hopes; she anticipates that he will be the one, that she will be the one, that he will be the one (and so forth, and so on). as their paths are about to meet her eyes are locked onto the arriving person with intensity– but she finds herself missed again. she finds herself a ghost. the sun is searing her shoulders but she ignores it; she continues to walk. click, click, click.

~~~

3.

the woman is faintly illuminated under the orange string lights roughly hung along the walls of the bar. it’s glow is pressing against her, giving her skin a sweet softness and luminosity. she is watching the ice melt in her drink. if a passerby were to slow their step and peak through the window, they would find the woman sitting across from a man, the man eagerly talking, the woman deep in thought at his invigorating words. the passerby would think to themself: how sweet a scene of love— new love, definitely— love just blooming; the two lovers thriving in their fresh emotions. yes, a love so pure, infantile; a love yet to be tainted in any way; it’s newness creates a fluidity… a complete lack of clarity in it’s being that begins as the appeal and morphs into the curse.

the woman watches the last small pebble of ice melt into her drink.

clarence john laughlin (1940)