All Filler, No Killer

I've been trying to save my energy for The Book Which Demands to be Written but Skips Away Like Mango in its Little Dancing Shoes When I Open its File. However, I hate to see a blog that hasn't been updated for months. Un-updated blogs are like beach cottages closed up for winter while their owners wheel-and-deal down in big, nasty Facebook City. It's depressing.

Here then, is a very short sample of the type of overwrought stuff I sometimes produce in writing workshops, with similes piled up in all the corners. Though to be fair to myself (and if I'm not, who will be?) this was supposed to be a prose-poem. Or flash fiction. Actually, I can't remember what it was supposed to be.

But my book doesn't sound like this at all! I swear! Well, maybe just every couple of pages or so.

Take it away, Meg!

At midmorning on Tuesday Meg announced she was going for coffee. She asked if anyone wanted anything; no one did. She rode the elevator down. Today was her birthday. Not a milestone, just a birthday. Nobody in the office knew. This was fine, really. She pushed through the lobby, through the revolving doors, through the smell of polished brass and Windex, out into the cold sun.

At Café Dolce she drank her coffee by the window. Why rush back? Birthday, after all. But she had to stand as neither table was free. One held an old-fashioned adding machine, a shoebox of receipts, a chewed pencil. At the other, a man and a woman strained toward one another, two sections of open drawbridge.

Across the landscape of the woman’s back — the apricot blouse through which vertebrae and the hard points of shoulder blades pressed — Meg saw the man's face and recognized it. She couldn’t say from where. Something knocked in her like a fist when he glanced up, his hair fallen forward, shirt open at the neck. She turned away and watched the sun climb the buildings across the street, the taxis moving like yellow fish, but knew anyway that the man had taken the woman’s hand between both of his. His chair rasped against the floor. He swallowed.

The woman's voice darted up like birds. She said, "next time I see you I'll only talk about happy things." A small silence. The man said, "It's all right. When I don't see you, the light goes out of the world."

Just that. Meg put her hand on the window, leaned her weight against it, spread her fingers dark against the sunlight. When the man and woman left she studied their table: a cup smeared with lipstick, a plate, two forks, paper napkins tossed like bedding.

Hey kids! Read it again, and this time don't forget to Spot The Similes™! Fabulous prizes for those who spot 'em all! (Similes must contain "like" or "as." Metaphors not included.)