Let's Begin
I think about starting. But how would it begin? A high school English teacher once told me it was lazy to initiate with dialogue. I remember a Business Communications professor who failed any paper that opened with “There are” or “It is.” So at least I know how not to start.
Googling “how to start a story” turns up fruitless. Accepting fault, I adjust my search, “how to start the best story ever written.” One result suggests all good openers contain character, setting, and action. “The father took his bowl to the kitchen sink.” Overlaying this formula onto my own story, “An uninspired male counted down the time to his deadline, a blank word document’s blinking cursor his metronome.”
No good.
I check Reddit. In the subreddit r/writers, a thread with my exact inquiry was posted. The first response? “Arm yourself with insights. First year $149, auto-renews at $299/year,” from username /bloomberg_sponsored.
Fuck.
I click into a notes document I keep on my desktop. There’s a folder next to it titled Home. In it, a folder titled Me. In there, a folder titled Dad. And it whispers to me, from three layers of folders deep, as I double-click my notes. Nerves turn over in my stomach. Heat creeps up into my shoulders. My neck. I bring my hands to my cheeks like ice packs.
I know what happens next.
Headphones. Bluetooth connect to laptop. Open new browser. YouTube. Bon Iver - 715 Creeks Live. Turn up volume until the silence of being home alone can’t reach me. Open Dad folder. Start with photos. The onset of tears choke me. Haunting lyrics. More photos. Cards from the funeral. The obituary I wrote. Song on repeat. The eulogy I spoke. Before videos, adjust volume of YouTube song, so it mixes as a quiet musicbed beneath the audio of home videos shot on iPhones. Wipe tears. Haunting lyrics. “Finding both your hands as second sun came past the glass / And oh, I know it felt right ‘cause I had you in my grasp.” Sloppy tears. “Honey, understand I have been left out here in the reeds / But all I'm trying to do is get my feet out from the crease.” Let myself lose it. Admit defeat. Mercy washes over me.
These are Tuesdays at 10:22a. And Thursdays at 4:13p. And Saturdays at 3:01a. Random. I am like a curtain quivering above a vent, unknowing of the next time the heat will kick back on, or how long it will last when it does.
All goes calm again. And I miss it already. The chaos. My connection to him.
I remember my deadline. Back to the document, I begin without questioning. “‘There are ways to break every rule,’ he said.”
Life is velvet. Durable and delicate at the same time.
