Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Clouded Poetry - 9

Flashback. She and Oliver had been good friends back in college. They exchanged quips, reading material and scribbled poems for the other's scrutiny,

The person she was dating, whom she eventually married and was unhappy with for a long period of time, went to another school. One day she had enthusiastically pulled out her latest poem for Oliver to read. So many decades ago and the image of it still vibrated in her head. He read quickly as was his style, each word floating across his face.

When he was finished he took her hand from across the table in the student lounge and said the words that had echoed and bumped around in her head all these years. He told her that the object of her affection was a rat!

Mr. Charming had been spotted on more than one occasion with another specific girl.

She had often wondered through the long painful years of the marriage and even since its end, how things could have been different if she had heeded Oliver's words.
If she had not denied them, brushed them to the side , and then continued into the abusive dance that had been their marriage. A meeting of someone who glanced in every mirror he passed (Carly Simon's "You're so Vain") and someone who was deftly patient, could eventually only spell disaster.

As she approached Oliver and Merrick, she felt the embarrassment and heat of the poor choices she had made since that day. Oliver looked toward her and raised his eyebrows in recognition. Somewhere in a box up on a shelf in her bedroom lay the crumpled page of that poem.

Oliver had insisted on flattening it out and handing it back to her after he had said "rat".

Somewhere in a box up on a shelf in her bedroom lay the crumpled page of that poem. (Click to Tweet)

For the rest of The Little Story, read here. 

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