Until We Meet Again

I once had a student who prompted me to share some of my daily writing. Based on Kelly Gallagher's writing philosophy, the students participate in "sacred writing," a time in which they view some sort of invitation to write for ten minutes and write where their thinking takes them. In any style.

I have a litany of responses and first drafts I never return to. The student was on to something.

Here is one of them:

Based off reading an excerpt from Renee Collins' Until We Meet Again, this is what I wrote in that 10 minutes.

The beach is empty, almost dilapidated by erosion and time. The waves are lapping and pooling at my bare feet as a slight chill moves up my body. The music fades now, just like the lights that pepper the gathering in the distance.

I had to leave. I had to be with myself. I needed to talk to her. My eyes glistened with tears, not out of emotion but out of response to the brisk breeze that made my hair dance around my face. I wrap my cardigan around me tight. One of the shoes I kicked off earlier as I jogged to the surf is slowly engulfed by an angry wave–angry I assumed because of the increasing wind speed. It slowly travels under the glass surface leaving a disrupting circle of bubbles. I didn't save it. I simply watched the shadowed shoe in the glow of the moonlight until it wasn't there any more and the water returned to its original state.

"Flor?" I jumped at the abrupt breaking of silence and touch on my shoulder wondering how I had evaded noticing someone had come up behind me. My heartbeat seemed so loud to me that I wondered if she could hear it. Not now.

"You...missed the announcement," she stated, unsure as to whether she interrupted something.

"Oh," I said with a pretend smile while washing the sand that had become stuck to my feet and calves. This was the moment I had dreaded.