Cherry, darling

I wrote this bit of fiction for a dear friend who gave me an idea in conversation.

Cherry

Black boots on wet concrete, like a shuffle cross broken glass, hollow footfalls, doubt that fades with each echo.
She walks alone, without a hint of uncertainty. There’s a lingering melancholy, faint, a shroud of sadness that life has delivered - seemingly in overnight express.
It started with a death, which led to a marriage unhinged. She had questions, unanswered. Whispers she just avoided.
She’s weathered the worst of it, retracted herself in tight, found strength within and with the new spring, emerged in Technicolor.
The black boots were a sign of her blossoming independence; a willingness to reinvent herself, speak for herself, like her own First Amendment.
She now marched on wet concrete, those black boots stomping out a cadence that seemed to grow stronger with each step. While retracted, she had filled notebooks with ideas, poetry, plans; they were about to become the blueprint for the next great thing.
If she could just grasp what that was.
She stopped cold in front of a pawn shop window. Among the power tools, snowboards and gaudy gold pieces was a red guitar.
She knew at an instant.
She splayed her fingertips wide, and with puffs of fog on the cold glass, whispered:
“Cherry, darling.”

Comments

missalister said…
Mystical, otherworldly. I'd put it that you went to that other world to get these words. The same world I got the same wind from…and McCauley, too. This class I’m taking is all brass tacks and I sure do miss the ethereal bliss of things like a shuffle ‘cross broken glass, hollow footfalls, doubt that fades with each echo : )

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