I want to be a better writer. But I just don't have the time right now. Maybe tomorrow. And that is so sad.

It was almost exactly midnight. I had driven all day to get to Baltimore. I stood outside a stranger’s house. The night was hot, sticky. Cars driving down city streets, muffled music from a neighbor’s house, cicadas buzzing, every now and then a dog barking—the sounds of this night were strange to me. The night was filled with sound and I remembered that the world will always talk when we are speechless. I just couldn't understand what the night was saying to me. In that moment, I knew everything that had led up to this night was important. And I wanted to remember it all. I knew that twenty years from now it would become vague. There was nothing I could do. Perhaps that was what the world was always trying to tell us with its noises—we will forget, right now in this moment we are forgetting. But it was not right. I knew it was a tragedy. It was not right that I would forget, I was already forgetting. Bea deserved to be remembered.

I knocked on the door and waited for the stranger to appear. Sarah O’Hearn. When she opened the door, I cringed. The gaze of this girl scalded my skin. She was tall and thin and not as pretty as Bea.

“I want to read the letter,” I said. She knew who I was from the funeral.

Sarah nodded. “Wait here.”

She disappeared into the house, leaving me alone with the noises of the night again. I wanted to tell the night that I didn’t understand it. Of course, I really wanted to tell Bea the same thing. But Bea was gone. And the night kept talking and making noise. It should be quiet. Just for a minute. Just so I could remember Bea.

Sarah returned with the letter. “Here it is,” she said holding the letter out for me to take.

“What does it say?” I asked. 

“I didn’t read it,” said Sarah.

I took the letter. As soon as I pulled my hand out of the doorway, Sarah shut the door in my face. I walked back to my car and read the letter there. I was crying by the end. I should have loved Bea. She deserved to be loved. She deserved to be remembered.

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This is a piece of a very rough story I've been working on. I need to fix this scene, but I can't do it right now. Since I have to leave to go to my doctor's appointment I can't write a real blog today so this is all I'm going to use. I'm so stressed and busy. I don't know if I'm going to have the time to write the next few days. But anyway, this piece is very simple. The story is purposefully written in stark prose. Ehh. I'm not sure how I feel about it.