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“Well, I’ve challenged you on that score quite enough for one day,” Philippe said. The other diners had left, only a couple sharing a beer remained under the awning.
“Shall we do a writing prompt?” he asked. “It’s late.”
“Yes!” Anjali said.
“Okay, here it is. Ready? It’s a line from one of my poems. I hope you don’t mind. ‘Let me not be closed to you, for where I am closed, there I am untrue.’”
Pens scratched and dotted various i’s. Philippe’s sadness and worry over Meredith descended on him, crushing his heart against his ribs. Now he wished he hadn’t suggested the writing prompt. He wished the evening were over. He was deep in the valley of the shadow of death, exhausted.
After six minutes he said, “Please, let’s stop, we can finish on our own later.” The group heard the fatigue in his voice and put their pens down.
“Okay, who wants to read?” he asked.
To get Philippe home more quickly, Carol interrupted the usual polite hanging back that the group did and said, “I’ll go.
“Let me not be closed to you,
for where I am closed, there
I am not true
I open the door of my heart
to face the blackness within.
The drunk, the homeless
look like what I feel.”
When that last sentence had emerged, she’d been startled. Where did that come from? Rather terrifying, indeed. And ‘blackness within,’ a bit of a cliché, dear, isn’t it? Did I just read this personal stuff aloud to this group? I guess I trust them.
“I’ll go,” said Anjali.
“Let me not be closed
not like this temple, shut fast
forbidding me to pray.
I stand before the temple wall.
My toes dig tunnels.
When I pray, it is with
my whole being.”
She liked the way she’d found a home for that line she’d heard at the poetry slam. And she’d changed it, made it her own, so it wasn’t stealing.
John thought, I’m a bit jealous she came up with that vivid line—digging tunnels with toes. That resonates. I’d do exactly that to get Emily to live with me.
“It’s disjointed,” Carol said.
Philippe thought, ouch, on behalf of Anjali. He said, “Here’s my attempt.” He rustled his copy, grabbed his glass of water, sipped it quickly, and began to read in a low, tight voice.
“I must tell you, but you know it,
that my question runs through my body
like molten lava down hills
planted with priceless trees:
Why do you not answer?”
The group paused again, out of respect for his pain.
“Love it,” murmured Carol. It was a strong bit of poetry.
“Thanks,” said Philippe, thinking, if all I’m going to get out of this situation with Meredith is a poem, it will be nowhere near enough.
