Friday, April 27, 2012

The Librarian Not In The Drawing




She asked, “Did you ever write that story?
You told me you would. What was the title?
I still remember the day when you told
me, ‘The Woman Who Was Never Alone’
That was it, wasn’t it? I remember
you said you’d start it in a library.
A guy drawing the reading area.
And when he draws the information desk
he includes two of the librarians
but not the third, not the young, pretty one.
She was going to talk to the artist,
tell him she saw him sketching, ask him why
he didn’t include her in the drawing.
Am I remembering the details right?
He was going to say he didn’t know
why he didn’t include her in the scene.
He was going to be very puzzled.
They were going to talk more. Go to lunch.
He was going to try to figure out
why he left the woman out of his sketch.
And then strange things were going to happen.
And eventually it would turn out
that she, the young, pretty librarian,
wasn’t human, right? She was a monster?
Eventually he would realize
that’s why he left her out of his drawing.
Because his subconscious brain in some way,
some way that transcends rationality,
recognized that the young, pretty woman—
as a young, pretty woman—wasn’t there.
Did you ever buckle down and write that?”

The man shook his head. He said, “No. Not yet.”

She said, “You should write that. That would be good.”
She look at him and smiled and then she laughed.
She was still laughing when she walked away.

The man watched until she turned a corner,
then he looked down. Both his hands were pressed flat
against the table. He was pressing hard,
but he saw that it wasn’t hard enough
to disguise how both his hands were shaking.
He exhaled and his whole body trembled.
He tried to remember if his voice shook
with fear when he had told her, ‘No. Not yet.’
But the memory was gone from his mind.
All he heard, in his mind, was her laughing.

He looked down. Both his hands were still shaking.







. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .




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