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 |  my entries for the Construct Cup |
| I cried when they left me— seven souls in a big blue van heading east again while I stayed behind. I was eighteen. I wanted college. I even wanted to be so far away, but watching them go I remembered how much I’d miss them—Mama and Daddy. Joyce and Rachel, Lorenzo and Madeline, and Rose. she was only two, learning new words and living at a run. so sweet. would she even remember me? six months is an eternity for a young woman who never had been away from home for more than a week. but our family road trip was in July, and coming home to fly away in September? so we drove through mountains and canyons, visiting family and singing the bickering away, and when we reached my aunt, I stayed. they left. and I would be gone until Christmas. I wrote often, but Rose— too small to read. I drew pictures of my life. my dorm room, the mountain, the cafeteria where I took my meals with a thousand other freshmen who became familiar—almost family. but not quite. midterms. Thanksgiving with my aunt. finals. then Christmas and home on a plane with a layover in Denver that lasted hours longer than it should have while the plane experienced issues and I couldn’t rest for aching— their absence was like the hole left by a pulled tooth. wrong. painful. in those days, they could meet me at the gate—seven souls standing in a group, waiting for me to clear it so they could descend on me with hugs and conversations started and overlapping, a familiar music—and I was whole again, but when I bent to Rose, she shrank away. I brushed it off as though it didn’t hurt, and we headed home, Rose staring at me as though I were a stranger through baggage claim and into the car where someone else took the seat that once was mine, and the city was dark and cold in the hour it took to get home, and my room had been changed because I didn’t live there anymore, and home felt wrong—like trying on someone else’s shoes, until Rose reached up and touched my face and smiled, and I was home for Christmas. line count: 75 Prompt ▼ |
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