A quote: “No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.” ~~ James Joyce
I’ll start with a story …
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Janice caught me on the floor.
“I dropped some change.”
She shrugged, placed files on my desk and left. But I saw her look back, frowning.
I stayed late, away from judging eyes, to puzzle the bright yellow thread. Why hadn’t I noticed before? 40 years with the company, 15 in this office alone, and now
What? Oh. Yes. The thread. I couldn’t get at it standing. It broke. I stayed on hands and knees along the baseboards. Pick, creep. Pick, creep.
No one seemed to notice it by day. After they left, I stayed. Pick, creep.
Night after night.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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featured image, cropped, by Steve Johnson from Pexels’ license.
Skillyboo says: Sunday, as custom, we always picked up Nana for church. We knew the moment we opened the door and saw the skein on the floor that things weren’t right. And there was she was slumped in her chair knitting needles in hand, as they always were. “Idle hands are the devil’s tools” she’d always say.
Her head slumped on her chest we knew she had gone to Heaven doing the thing she loved the most, knitting something for one of us. Choking through tears we made the necessary calls then, as we all gathered, sat around the kitchen table remembering.
Carl knew better than to walk across Amy’s bedroom floor in the dark, but the sound of her low, sultry voice, as she lay in her queen-size bed, drew him to her.
“Come,” she said. “Just watch out for the yarn on the floor.”
He joked aloud:
“Amy Toth
“Knits well she doth,
“Until a slub
“Makes her flub.”
He laughed, stepped on a ball of yarn, and fell to the floor. A bone cracked.
She looked down at him and said:
“Carl Cline
“With sex on his mind,
“Makes me call 911,
“So we miss all the fun.”
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