Original Fiction / Art Prompt Writing Contest #7

Photograph by @agsttne

[Below, my submission to a writing contest requesting an original piece of fiction in response to the image above.]

You Are Not Here

Welcome to Reality, the sign read. But I wasn't convinced. This is a failure of imagination, I thought, we can do far better than this. So, I did what I've always done. I turned my back to what was unsightly and faced the vast blue. I can live this way, subsisting on a modest diet of sky and sea. I'll take long walks, get drunk on air, and return to the apartment to write. Nothing else to do, and no more distractions left. No stifling job or family contortions, and little headway made with spiritual adventures. What remained, but to turn inward?

"Did you think you can fix this all by yourself?" she asked, the first time they met. "Don't you realize you're no good to anyone if you're bitter or broken." I didn't know what to say to her at the time. Reaching for my notebook, I pointed to the last line I'd written: If our hearts should harden and turn to ice, we must try, at least, not to blame it on the weather. She smiled with her whole body and let me move in with her. We can make a life together, she suggested, wordlessly. And, we did, for years. She taught me how to breathe, again.

Back in the apartment, all hollows ached. The unfulfilled promises made to oneself and others, the unlived lives. But, nevermind. This is what we have, now, this is where we find ourselves. We can still make some good of it, and forge a way forward in the darkness. The waves seemed to hush all his inner noise away. The rising moon teased him out of the paralysis of analysis that he so easily slipped into.

Maybe not monasticism, but a certain strain of mysticism was still permitted him. Reading and writing still took him there, intensified his consciousness, using words to lose himself. Silence and solitude were always his greatest masters, his most loyal friends. All he must do is try to honor the opportunities that were afforded him, that were hidden in plain sight, even here. This is not reality, that much he knew.

After his walking meditation, he took out his notebook and, in a trance-like state, began to write: "Try and leave everything in your way in slightly better shape: the home in disarray, the neglected pet, the lonely neighbor, the homeless person on the bench, the hungry birds in the parking lot, the despondent stranger, the overworked elder at the checkout, the trash-littered sidewalk, the overturned shopping carts..."

He would attempt this practiced-poetry, tomorrow. He was not enamored with writing, as before, if he couldn't breathe life into it off the page. This is not reality, he reminded himself with steely resolve -- it would be cynicism to think so. The transformation he longed for might not manifest in quite the way he had hoped - whirling in blinding light, streaming epiphanies. He'd have to fashion a new way of being with his own hands, in utter humility. Then one day, maybe after a long life spent in quiet service, he might finally get lucky and be granted a glimpse of Bliss.

© Yahia Lababidi