A double drabble.
He hadn’t been out of the chair in three days, but that didn’t preclude movement. A pile of crushed, crumpled, balled-up paper spilled off the table where he sat, most streaked in smeary pen, some off-color with the salt of dried tears. A few featured drops of blood. He was exhausted, eyes open, yet the mouth hung slack, open, silent from the crying he’d done. Seventy two hours before the paper cascaded from his card table, before he broke the pens screaming. All because she’d walked by his picture window, new lover on her arm, but her eyes still spoke sadness. A sin unforgivable after the divorce meant to return her to a place inside herself, warm with history and the rich traditions of a family he never really joined.
The letters he fails to write are fire to be used against the predicament of place she finds herself in. In time, he will see by the light of that fire padlocks picked, a way cleared ahead. Her pastures are her own to burn; let her have the torches. The skies above are no longer off limits to anyone with the power to spread feathers and lean into the wind.
