prompts or not

prompt or not: lovers
AWW ~ 09/10/14
***

Blank paper.
Blank screen.

What has bitten your tongue Carol?
What has stifled your voice?
Why do you allow it?
Is it a phase...this avoidance of writing, especially putting out anything of depth on my blog or anywhere online?

When I publish a piece on my blog or elsewhere, I don't want to explain the piece or feel that I should explain. I don't want to necessarily engage in discourse about what I might write.

Today as I felt my inner self-doubt gremlin, I closed my eyes and lay back on my and Hubby's bed. It's a king size, tube, water bed that is in much need of a new mattress shell. The current shell slumps toward the middle, so Hubby and I usually sleep on the far ends of the mattress where it is more level, less slumpy.

Hubby is usually the first to retire in the evenings, between nine and ten o'clock. I follow between ten o'clock and midnight. I seldom close my eyes right away. I usually turn on my night stand light and read from my smart phone or from a hard copy book, or I work Sudoku puzzles from a paperback book. Lately I've opted for Sudoku over reading. When I successfully complete a Sudoku puzzle, I draw a smiley face on the top of the puzzle page.

I wonder who created Sudoku; who figures out all those different puzzles?

Sometime in August, to try to help sharpen my brain, I pulled out my Sudoku book. And Sudoku may not really exercise my neurons, but it can't hurt. I enjoy playing, especially the "easy" puzzles. The number nine is a fascinating number; I think it is my favorite number. But it's not a prime number, and I like prime numbers.

Prime numbers stand alone.

Today as I felt my inner self-doubt gremlin, I lay on my bed, face toward the ceiling, my eyes closed. I focused on my heart area. Carol, can you somehow thank this self-doubt, this anxiety you feel? Thank it and ask what its purpose is?

Almost immediately, my mind's eye saw a young adolescent girl. Shivering. Alone. In the rain.

These internal images I get seem so stupid.
Quiet, Carol...just go with the image.
What would you do for a young girl, alone, in the rain...especially if it was someone you knew and loved?

In my mind's eye I gave a coat to the young, shivering girl, placing the coat around her shoulders. It was a long, dark coat, like a trench coat but not jet black. I wasn't sure as to what else to do for this young woman shivering in my heart.

The shivering was the most notable characteristic of the girl.

She wasn't shivering due to the cold; she was shivering because she was afraid.

My front doorbell rang. I continued to lay on my king size bed. Maybe it's UPS delivering a package, and they'll just go away.

I did not want to talk to anyone if I could help it.

Then I heard banging on the front door.
Knock!
Knock!
Knock, knock, knock!

I got up and walked across the hall into my son's bedroom, though my son doesn't permanently reside there anymore. I walked over to the window and peeked through the closed blinds looking across the front yard and out to the street where a big, white, flat bed, delivery truck was parked. There was a large box at the back of the truck. A man walked through our front yard away from our home and to the back of the truck, stopping to look at the large box, and then walked around the opposite side of the truck and climbed into the driver's seat.

Inside the house, I walked back across the hall to my bedroom. With a sigh, I strapped my black, Teva sandals onto my feet.

I walked through the upstairs hall noticing the tenderness in the soles of my feet reminding myself of my new normal. I held the banisters as I carefully descended the two sets of stairs. Once on the ground level, I walked though the den and through the office and through the laundry room and through the garage to the driveway. I walked down the driveway toward the truck. The driver was on his cell phone, talking, as he got out of the truck to meet me in the driveway.

He was delivering a mattress, and our address was written on his delivery slip. But neither Hubby nor I had ordered a mattress.

I really should buy us a new mattress soon.