something sort of "seasonal" from today's workshop. prompt was: use the following 3 words: pumpkin, chant, bell.

It's cold - not really winter cold but so cold after all those long days of summer. It's cold and my tan has faded and the blonde gone from my hair - the beach, the ocean, just a memory. I'm standing leaning against his car, watching him choose a pumpkin. Not me - I love them, sure but what would I do with all those seeds, all that pulp and then the silly thing rotting away on what - my fire escape? I don't have a porch. He finds one he likes and waves me over. I stand, hands in coat pockets and watch as he does a city boy's job of cutting the stem. I won't help him or correct him (even though he's doing it wrong) because that would only upset him and I want him to have fun even though I'm cold and want it to be summer again.

Tonight there's a huge party - a street celebration with fire-eaters and jugglers and drunken half-naked people running around in bizarre masks. Me - I'll stay home and watch a movie, something old, classic - full of drifting shadows and eerie music or maybe I'll go to a friends' and watch them celebrate the old way, ring in the new year with charcoal and drifting incense...with the slow drone of a chant older than the bible hymns, older than the cross or maybe just sit in the old church, the bells tolling in the midnight and then the long walk home through rising cold and rising dark at the cusp of the year when the door swings wide and all the old stories come true and I'll take them home with me, invite them in, listen and learn and try not to be afraid. But for now, I'll just watch him and wait while he stomps around in the leaves, while he pretends he's a country boy and I pretend this is where I want to be and who I want to be with. (c) 2010