Flash Fiction Friday

Morning Glory

by Donna L Martin

The sun was just starting to come up when Neil reluctantly let go of his dream. It was the same one he'd had for the past three nights. Molly was laughing at something he'd said, looking at him with eyes the same shiny blue as the morning glories hanging outside the coffee shop where they ate breakfast every morning for the past six years.  He stopped eating there because now just the sight of them felt like a knife in his gut.

Neil rolled over and absently reached out for her. His mind knew she was gone but his heart just couldn't say goodbye. Slowly he opened his eyes as his hand touched where her auburn hair used to curl so softly next to his it would sometimes tickle his nose as he slept. What he wouldn't give to be tickled like that again. Now there was just a cold, sterile pillow to take up space in that big empty bed.

It had been a year since she left him. A year to curse God, feel the anger well up inside, and endless nights to lie awake fighting back tears threatening to break through the careful wall he built around his aching heart. Well-meaning friends kept telling him it was time to let her go, time to move on, but how could he move on when he couldn't even remember how to breathe without her?

Shuffling through the kitchen, Neil grabbed a piece of dry toast and his keys as he made his way to the front door. Maybe he should think about moving? Maybe move up north and start over? Or maybe he would just crawl back under the covers and pray for the dream to come again.

Opening the front door, it took him a moment to notice it. Shiny blue flowers caught his eye.  There, in the flower bed Molly made him dig for her last summer, were dozens of beautiful morning glories. Bright blue like her eyes. For a moment Neil thought he was losing his mind. For a moment he almost forgot to breathe and looked around to see who would play such a cruel joke? Then he remembered their last conversation at the hospital as he held her hand and gently moved aside the tubing to kiss her cheek...

***Okay, it's your turn! What did Molly tell Neil? How will he find the strength to carry on?  Put your creative cap on and add a sentence or add a paragraph.  Continue my story or start one of your own.  Join the fun and see where this picture prompt takes us!***

A Life Well Loved

She could still feel him in the air.  Sitting next to her on that worn out seat.  She could almost smell the sweet tobacco of his pipe.  How many years had they sat on that bench...holding hands, sharing a kiss, remembering the day he asked her to be his?  The bench was new then with a fresh coat of paint and nestled among the old oak trees in the corner of the back yard of a house they could finally call their own.  Oh how they had to scrimp and save those beginning years.  They would plan their future on that bench and it was there they figured out how to stretch those pennies to feed another mouth.

She drew her shawl across thin shoulders and smoothed the gnarled seat with a hand much the same.  So many plans, so many dreams over the years and so many secrets that bench was privy to.  Like the day she almost lost him to another.  She raced to the bench and let the tears soak into the wood.  How could she have missed the signs?  Oh how she hated those dark nights where voices raised in anger and tears fell like rain.  But somehow they made it through and their bond became stronger as they sat on that bench and watched their children grow.

Fifty years was a long time to share with that bench.  They even talked about replacing it once, but decided it would be like losing a member of the family.  And so they sat and grew old together.  Until one day they carried him away in the rain and her cries echoed through the home they had built together.  Now she sat on that bench just to catch a whiff of his pipe, to feel his spirit sitting next to her.  In those last months he kept reminding her that death is just another part of living.  She remembered him telling her just like that old bench, their love had followed the seasons and soon it would be time for another bench...and other lives...to take their place and dream the dreams to come.

To honor him, she sat on that bench and drank in the memories of a life well lived and a love shared with another.  He would wait for her, somewhere in the beyond, but these days it's just her and that bench.  And for now, that's enough...