Random word challenge #352: Sharp
This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
The story will begin with “as gray as the day was…”
As gray as the day was long, he thought.
He urged the minute hand tick in Geometry 65 years ago: five minutes and the bell. Are these those lost moments?
He thinks of her every time he sees a birch tree. Somewhere, he learned dead trees sustain life in a forest.
She often recited the day’s poem to him. Today’s shared “the quiet diminishment of daily life” just before the first sharppain.
Thank goodness for this bench. She liked sitting here; he was restless, anticipating the next tock.
He memorized it for this final moment: “Celebrate the meager light.”
The poem in the story is “A Gray Day” by Elena Shvarts.
