The following is the result of a writing prompt as part of the Pen to Paper Live sessions hosted each week by the Charlotte Lit organization. The sessions are free and held Tuesday mornings. You can register here.
Corner of Elm and Second
She never disappoints. She’s always there.
The U.S. Postal Service may well splash the words “through rain, sleet, hell or high water” the mail must go through. But in my world, it’s the lady on the porch who is as constant as the sun rising and the sun setting.
She’s there at the corner of Elm and Second streets, her house sitting perpendicular to the stop light that always seems to catch me, a road block to my morning rush.
I usually curse, looking at the dash, the clock showing me I’ve got 3 minutes to get somewhere that’s going to take me at least 15. And I sit. One hand fast-tapping a rhythmic beat on the steering wheel, keeping time with the wasted seconds, the other pushing the buttons on the radio, pulsing, rock music filling the cab of my 15-year-old Honda.
I glance over and she’s there, often in a faded aqua blue house dress, her hair pulled tight in a severe bun, her gaze forward, where to I have no idea. In her wooden rocker, she methodically rises and falls, her feet flexing, hands and fingers still, except for a slight startle when a horn from the impatient driver of the black Suburban behind me sounds.
It’s funny that I think of her when my boss hands me my pink slip later that day. “I warned you,” she says, watching as I clear my desk, tossing a calendar from the year before into a small box of my meager belongings. “You’ve got to show up to work on time.”
I think of the woman on the porch. And of time.
And I know that tonight when I inevitably stop at that intersection, there at the corner of Elm and Second, she’ll be there. And I wonder if I will raise my hand and wave.
For there will be time.
Michael Banks 360 