Oh boy. Sometimes you can just hunt and around and stumble upon something great and just feel so grateful for the internet and the millions and millions of words floating out there for us to find.
Anyway, I just stumbed across this story that just grabbed me by the throat Ten Letters to the President by Paul Maliszewski:
The conversation could have easily gone in a different direction. As Ted smoked his cigarette down and I polished off my sandwich, I imagined how when Ted asked me how things were going and I answered him that things weren’t going bad, that Ted, in our wholly hypothetical lunch break on another planet, would turn to me then and ask what was wrong, and that I, for once, would actually tell him what was wrong. I would tell him how close I’d come to kidnapping Abby and Nick, how I’d had a cabby drive us nearly to Winston-Salem before I thought better and, you know, got a grip. It was a long story. I might require several lunch breaks to tell it in its entirety, but I wanted to try. When asked how it was going, I wanted to respond honestly. I always consider the honest response, however momentarily. I do want to be more honest. Inside my head, I feel the sentences arranging themselves, queued up like soldiers, in ranks and columns, ready to be deployed, ready to leap out into the air. But I pause. That’s as far as I often get. I speak maybe one sentence for every fifteen or twenty that I think. I pause, and I wait, and I think, come on, man, just ask me what is wrong—or whatever the question happens to be—please just ask me what’s wrong. It will only unlock everything.
This story is heartbreak. All heartbreak. It is funny and it is absolutely, without a doubt, tragic.
p.s. part of it takes place around 9/11–so if you are avoiding such reminders, you may want to not read this story.
myfanwy collins 