Writing Exercise (Thursday)

She knew there were things she would have to leave behind besides her cat. Her plants, certainly. Those poor old pink geraniums. The Navajo rug, worn with nights of restless worry. Her books, her art. Her silverware, all seven pieces of it, and her one large glass for wine.

The letters, too, she would abandon. She had no use for sentiment. Where she was going was a land of sand and sun and circumstance, where you did not wait for your dreams but marched right up to them and tapped them on the shoulder.

"Hello, dream," you said, "and see what I've got for you."

You wrangled the dream and tamed it. You caught the tiger by its tail.

"The cat," she remembered now as it wove purring between her legs, rubbing silk against her ankles. She reached down to stroke it and it arched back heavy against her hand, throbbing in bliss. She would, she conceded, miss the cat.

It was raining outside and the droplets down the window, streaming behind the pink geraniums, made her feel safe and cocooned. She had nowhere to go and no one who was waiting for her. She was alone amid the colors, and it was hollow and dependable.

Laurie Grace was 23, but she already felt that she had lived a great deal longer.