Simply Scarce

From The Narrator

Let me tell you about this piece of writing. It's a hard one to explain. In six short lines I, the narrator will tell you an entire story, but it's a different one every time because I did not mean for this to only carry my own. However, that will not stop me from telling you my own.

This isn't just a free verse, non professional, bored-person-sitting-at-home-gets-a -sudden-strike-of-inspiration poem. Not that there isn't some of all that in it, but I wrote this with someone very particular in mind.

Take a deep breath, because I'm going to do my best to make this short and to the point.

I knew someone once, and I guess you could say that I still know that person today but our paths have not crossed in a long time now. This person has a heart of gold, nothing but good intentions and a mouthful of wishful promises that could never be held up. Maybe you know this person.

Don't make promises you can't keep.

I said that near the end of time together. We'd become great friends at that point, and that's what makes it sting the most when what was so real at one point fades away with the past. He promised not to make such promises, and I just shook my head and smiled at the irony. Then that was that. That short, twenty five second piece of history has been drilled into my memory in crystal clear format like it happened mere moments ago. Why? Because I wish I had said more. I wish I had not just said that one line of do not. I should've explained why not as well, but I didn't.

Fast forward awhile into the present. I have not seen that person in a very long time. Time has even softened the sharp, empty edge that not seeing him in a very long time has brought about. But then one of those nights came. You know the kind that starts out normal enough, and then suddenly you're swept off to a place where everything reminds you of someone, or something? But not just any someone or something, it's always that someone or something that has a brought about a touch of sad, bitter tragedy into your life story in one way or another.

It inevitably brought me back to a disappointed wishful state of mind. I wish I had sat him down and even for just five minutes explained why one should not make promises when one can simply state the fact that they mean without an impossible bond attached to it. Maybe common sense has already helped him figure things out, but I don't know. Common sense isn't common anymore, and though I can say so many good things about him, always having common sense is not one of them.

So there I was, wishing like that person always did. Wishes are empty, you might as well throw them to the wind. I could not go back in time to remedy the situation, but I did what was possible in the present: I picked up pen, opened a book, and wrote what I would tell that person now if I could. 

In six short lines I will tell you an entire story. What story is this to you?