Finding My Words

I was lost today. I wandered my house, aimlessly studying the pictures and stains on the wall. How did she feel, sitting in the sunshine there with her love? How did the door to the closet acquire so many scratches? And both questions left me equally perplexed, equally unknowing. I drove the path I've driven twice a day, five times a week for the past five months. Am I headed in the right direction? Have I passed this already? How could I have been lost in my own life?

What shall I say today? What do I have to say? Here's what. It's unseasonably warm. There's something so grown-up about referring to a day as being "unseasonably warm," perhaps because it alludes to the fact that you must have been alive long enough and been bored enough to pay attention to the weather for enough years that you know what's considered "seasonable" and therefore, what must be considered "unseasonable." As I was saying. It's unseasonably warm. And so, I think to myself, I must get outside. We should go on a hike or walk around on a boardwalk or go to the beach. Yes, let's go to the beach. But no, my time is no longer my own and my oldest child is now only mine between the hours of 3:30 pm and 8:30 the next morning. And really, if I must wake him at 7 to ready him for the hours of belonging to another entity, then he should go to bed early enough to facilitate this early rising. And so then, he's really only ...

Prompt, courtesy of Lady Writer: An impulse buy leads to intergalactic warfare. The thing is, this could all have been avoided if I hadn't stopped for wine and chocolate on the way home. I nearly didn't, you know. I nearly let myself drive straight instead of remembering to turn right at the last light before my neighborhood, as I've done on countless other days when I don't want to fuss with the hassle of driving through a parking lot, narrowly avoiding pedestrians and rogue buggies, remembering to turn off my headlights, walking through the store and perhaps running into a neighbor who wants to chat about my perennially dying gardenias, making small talk with the cashier, remembering to turn my headlights back on, and delaying my arrival at my couch by 20 minutes. But traffic had been worse than usual and the persistent drizzle had made my hair