Am I only material
for you to feel?
Is that all you see
when you look at me?
-Robert Creeley
Wendy woke up to find the room cold. And empty. She watched her fingers roam the swirls of blue and whites on the quilt. A small tear opened the inside and a little down escaped through. She stuffed it back in and felt better. Less empty. She could relax because she had fixed something. And that something wouldn’t be irrevocably lost. She was crazy about stuff like that.
Jones should have been back by now. The endless touring, the days on the road promoting his band’s new album, was daunting. She lay there curled like a fetus and tried to hide from the fact that Jones was missing. His absence was like a presence itself.
Wendy fingered the Russian-doll bracelet that hung from her wrist. The smallest doll of the set, the doll without the hollow insides, she wore even in bed. A tiny ornament, her hand dwarfed the thing, so small she could have crushed it between her fingers.
In the note he’d left with the bracelet, Jones explained that it was something he was giving back to her. He had taken the smallest doll from her dresser as a souvenir while he was touring. He had decided to make the doll into a bracelet so that she could keep it as a souvenir of him instead. Wendy missed him so bad she wore it everywhere. It was the essence of Jones.
Before Jones, her moods had always been her impediment. Outside it could be sunny and warm but inside she would be gloomy. Sometimes she felt a love so great that it would leave her exhausted and pining for more. She would be eating a salad and it would be so good she’d relish in every bite, happiness exuding from her very pores, and it would be awesome like divine light happening to envelope her in its warmth. She’d be alone listening to a record, and the song would be just right. Or it’d be Jones and his smile. Everything would be so good she could pop with gladness. Then it would shift and she would be gloomy like an overcast day.
Lights and darks. That’s how she saw them. Like the patterns of her quilt, they complemented each other with their lights and darks.
She pushed her feet outside the blanket. It barely covered her. Her skin went white and goose-pimply.
From the time she was six and until she was eleven, she would play games of hide-and-seek by herself. Tucked inside a closet or breathing silently underneath her blanket, she would pretend she didn’t exist and things would suddenly feel safe. Her mind would be silent. She would cross her fingers until her mother found her like this, and banished her from her hiding spot. In those moments when she ceased to exist, she found herself feeling the most relieved. With Jones she no longer wanted to hide. Jones was a genius for turning things around. It was what made Wendy attached to him. With Jones she saw things in a way she wouldn’t have seen herself. Without Jones, everything was stale. Life left her without a sound.
She got up and went into the kitchen to fix herself some tea. A cup of tea wouldn’t save her. It wasn’t like she could poke her insides back in.
Under the sheets, Wendy could almost summon up Jones’ warmth. She propped two pillows up in the bed beside her. In the darkened room, they looked like Jones’ back. She squeezed Jones’ pillow to her chest, and was comforted. Lying there, she could feel their togetherness.
Advertisement
Hey My, I would suggest you flip the last two paragraphs. Because in the second to last paragraph the main character gets out of bed, then suddenly she is back in bed in the next. As an excerpt it the line “It wasn’t like she could poke her insides back in,” would make a nice image to end on. I do not know, however, how the piece concludes and how this fits in with the rest of the story. If we continue with her in bed you could easily get away with just saying she went back to bed or something and not move the paragraphs. You just have to have the tracking.
My, i agree with Lauren. You can keep the sequence of events the way you have it, if you clarify where she is in space (bed or kitchen).
Either way, you did a very good job with these revisions. Thanks.