What is the quote? Life happens while we make other plans? Your challenge this Friday is to use 100 words inspired by this image. Wistful? Regretful? How does the image speak to you?
I’ll start with a story
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“Quite the view.”
I nodded, my eyes roaming over the city. Corner office, 22nd floor. Years of hard work, maniacal focus and, yes, office politics.
It was the anniversary of my promotion. And yet …
Turning to him — the boy I shared all my dreams with. The boy I left behind. Only a few months ago this man appeared. So unlike the men here, he was few of words but each was honest and final.
His eyes held mine, “You got what you want?”
The view forgotten behind me, I stared at his eyes, dazzled by his patience.
“Not yet.”
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Now, it is your turn.
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featured image, cropped & enhanced, by picjumbo.com from Pexels
David Krishan says: Claire was a proud Feminist.
Sure, she was over thirty, eating for one, had three cats, and spent most of her time in the office earning funds that she spent on her expensive city studio so she could… live the life. She had it all.
Except she was alone. She’d tried dating, but the men were (unsurprisingly) too weak. The only (sexy, strong, capable) man who’d ever stood up to her was her boss, but he was a dirty Republican. No love there.
Maybe it was better this way. She could do more while unencumbered.
Claire was a proud Feminist.
garlandtwitty says: Great portrait of today’s feminist!
I had my variation already written, so posted it anyway.
The difference between our two careerists might be that while Claire would have welcomed Senator Flake’s trashing of our President, she would have no use for him after his vote for Judge Kavannah.
garlandtwitty says: Sigh.
Just when she finally met a guy who was a superb partner, who listened, and who genuinely cared about her, he refused to accept the invitation to move in!
Marriage? Why!? Children?!?! Uuuuoooooh! Didn’t her career mean anything to him?
And then there was the “modest” request to attend weekly worship services. “You need not join,” he reassured her, “or confess to beliefs. Just sit with me and meditate. It will be uplifting!”
Sigh.
But the true show stopper was his annoying response, a slow shaking of the head, when she approved of the moderation of Senator Jeff Flake.
He’s out there somewhere, I can sense his close presence, four years and the last lead was a dead end, but I can’t give up. He was always telling me to be positive, even when we mysteriously lost our parents and then he vanished, leaving a mystery that official inquiries offered no answers, remotely satisfactory. He was always protective in ways I was not always aware of, until friends would relate, his intersession on my behalf, in affairs of the heart, which could have wounded me deeply. I need to find my long-lost brother or an answer and move on.
Andrew says: I left early and came up here to think.
What John knows:
I’m his wife. I’m twenty six. I’m still called a student even though I’m the only one in the world who understands my project. He thinks when we both finish grad school we’ll get real jobs and settle down.
What John doesn’t know:
I took the test this morning, right there in the lab bathroom.
What John also doesn’t know:
She already has a name.
Tagmec says: She hadn’t broken space-time, so there was that.
Lauren sat on the low stone wall, taking in the view of the city she had saved. Two million people seeing a sunrise they were never meant to. They would live out their days ignorant of the bomb which should have leveled downtown. They would never know the future she had lived — America’s fall, the so-called Caliphate’s rise, the endless bloody jihad. Their world, fractured and maddening as it was, would not end here.
Her world had ended on the point of a knife, slipping in between the bomber’s ribs.
Justin says: Memories can be like a drug. Or a weapon. They will cut, sliding through the chinks in even the finest armor, driving deep to the unprotected center, a wound waiting to bleed. She knew this all too well, the quiet scars never truly healed. But today the wind was in her face and the sun was warm against her back.
For now, that was enough.
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