Walking into an empty room is like being that child again, the one who is five and has to go to school where everyone talks a different language. That feeling of expectancy that slowly changes to a realisation that you are alone after all- sort of abandoned. The rhythms of other people always seem to somehow beat together, as though "everyone knows" the language, the place, the time, the right outfits, the right rituals and the arrhythmic anxious racing of my own inky heart is unable to find an entrance into the pattern, or if I do find it there is a tiny imperceptible change.
There is no way to be who I am and yet connect with "them" and they are always bigger, cooler, further forward and seem to know what they are doing. But really, at times they talk utter nonsense anyway. I sit here and draft a poem and pretend I don't care that the whole thing was cancelled and no one told me and smile so it won't look like I am waiting to be "kicked out" because I don't belong. Do I look as fearful and timid as I feel? Someone speaks to me and I jump half a metre into the air in shock and try to mutter something before they turn away in disgust.
Did a noise come out when I opened my mouth? Sometimes I am too quiet and no one hears, although inside my head I am shouting, projecting, holding forth on a range of topics and opinions. But when they ask me I stammer or breathe, it catches in my throat somehow and won't come out. Why is that?
I have sat in this empty room for long enough. I will find some less awkward way to waste my precious time!
YOU ARE READING
We love short shorts!
Short StoryThese will be my flash fiction attempts in a range of genres as the fancy strikes me. I will write them now and then just for the discipline of writing. All will be under 500 words. In a way this is also a type of poetry
