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I Imagine Walking Excerpt
We were escaping Philadelphia at long last, a city I had learned to loath and we'd spent no more than the plane ride alone. I had wanted to take a ship, but Rick said it would take too long. It shouldn't have surprised me we'd grown more and more apart since he'd gotten back from the pacific 10 years before. No kids had come during our years together. Rick just worked longer and longer hours and more days. Always telling me it was for us so we could travel and retire early. Now we were traveling, four whole months away, granted it was for work and so in a few more days Rick would be busy on the job. Nothing had changed though we might as well have been back in Philadelphia. I could only feel the walls closing in, a rock sitting on my chest that never lifted. Rick himself was driving the walls higher.
"I say Rick I've just got news of a boat that's free shall I tell them we'll take it out. We could be gone until you have to get to work. Celebrate proper." Marcus said coming back from the bar as we sat at a little restaurant.
"Let's go." Rick snapped without a word to me.
"Rick I thought we were going to explore tomorrow."
"You've been saying you wanted to be alone so here's your chance." He was gone before I had a chance to add that it was him I wanted to be alone with.
"Let's go grab some other clothes." I could hear them saying as they walked off.
"You can find your own way back can't you?" Rick called from the door. The owner of the restaurant filled my glass of wine almost to overflowing without even asking. I didn't complain. It seemed the entire restaurant knew I had been dumped, that my marriage was over even before I would admit it to myself.
The Odyssey Excerpt
It was only as they ate lunch that Molly spoke again. The silence was getting to her. She could spend all day alone in her own cottage in silence, but it didn't weigh down on her as it did that day.
"Nora how long have you written poetry?" She figured it a safe enough topic.
"My father started it as a hobby when I was young, so I've done it most my life I guess. Why do you ask?"
"I saw the papers on the table when I was waiting. It's very good."
"What does it matter? I'll not even have the energy to write it anymore."
Molly was shoving a bite into her mouth when she spoke as if it was nothing at all. "You could sell them." Nora just stared at her as she chewed. "There's that Mr. Wordsworth that lives over at Rydal Mount."
"Molly I couldn't." She cried.
"Why not?"
Nora stammered for an answer for a minute before she finally got out. "What if he said he hated it?"
"What if he liked it?" Molly stood up and left before Nora could find another argument.
Days passed as the sheep were sheered and Nora took the wool to sell. It was only as she saw just how little she held in her hand after food and supplies were purchased that she seriously considered Molly's words. It wasn't enough by far to last the winter. She could sell the sheep, but then what next year. A tear slipped down her cheek.
"Oh Daniel." She stared at the pages she had written over the last 8 years. Could she really let some else read her hopes and dreams. The Odyssey she wrote after Daniel died. It was her grieving for the man that she had left a fairly well to do family for a shepherd's cottage, a life she knew nothing about. She had learned though, she had learned it all. Gardening, tending sheep, housekeeping, sewing, and finally after 4 years Anne had come to them and she learned all that as well.
"Tomorrow I'll go." She murmured to herself. She wasn't going to let Anne starve.
