I'm Promising

Lying there, in the dark, my mind arace with thousands of thoughts and feelings lacing their way through my mind at a thousand thoughts per second, my hand alighted upon my bare hip—my thin top having ridden up a bit from constant shifting. This, I thought, this is one of those lovely poses they find you in after you've been shot. The detectives come in and snap photos of the scene, lamenting in a matter of fact way about the loss of another life. The news reports trickle in at 10 or 11 o'clock, and they mention something about the loss of this “promising young writer who had a passion for art and animals.” I stop in my musings—I'm promising. Egotistical as it may be, that's the biggest compliment I could receive from someone regarding my future profession. Promising. The word rings in my mind like a dainty silver bell. Beautiful, small, promising in its own right.

"I have to write this down," she says to herself. "I have to write this down, I'm promising, after all."

She runs the lines several times through her head, then reluctantly clicks on the bedside lamp—half afraid of the sudden burst of light scattering her thoughts and chasing away the sudden inspiration. Only after convincing herself of the danger of her cluttered floor does she give in.

She rushes downstairs, smoothly, in that ridiculous way she has when she's trying to hold a piece of work in her mind, as though the slightest jostling or wrong movement could shake it out of grasp, eternally lost in the cavern of her mind. She fumbles slightly in the dark, still new to this home. Her fingers gently come in contact with the hard, cool plastic of her laptop. She tucks it under her arm and jumps idly up the stairs to dump her thoughts onto paper and out of her mind.