Balance

Claudia McGill 10 Comments

Here is another of those two-sentence stories with poetry added. I’m thinking of them as “Minuscule” and quick to read.

Read the first Minuscule, the explanation of why I wrote it and got started on this idea, and search under the category Fiction/Poetry Combination for others in the series.

Balance

I could see the wheels turning in her head, her thinking as transparent to me as the crystal of the watch she held out. The serial numbers match and my past is none of your business, she was saying, but I knew she was lying; I took the easy way and then I paid for it the hard way, that’s what she was thinking, that’s what had happened, that’s what she didn’t want me to know, and that’s what I knew, the tiny gears vibrating and turning inside the watch ticking out the truth with each passing second.

 

Too early
time ends. The ruined face
broken hands
broken heart
each hour out of balance
the trembling gears. Dead.

(Shadorma 40)
1/22/18

12th Street and Clock idea small

10 thoughts on “Balance”

    • Thank you. That makes my day. Since I have arbitrarily restricted my sentences (no matter how I string them out, it is still only 2!) I try to suggest both a front and an ending, imply the rest of the story, with just this one part. Usually I have both in my mind, but – someone else can come up with entirely different ones, and that is why I keep doing these, it is so addictive to figure all this out, and make it happen. Thank you for seeing that in my work.

    • Yes. I liked the idea of the watch, and the balance wheel (which these digital ones don’t have of course) – I remember taking the back off my watch when I was young to watch it. Well, I think sometimes things are like that balance wheel – it gets out of adjustment. And then it is hard to keep things going.

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