100 Word Challenge: Bridge Over Troubled Water

His back faced me doing something meaningless. I know that now.

“Notice how much weight I’ve lost?” 

“Yes, why is that?” 

What I should have asked only more delicately. In utter weakness, I responded,

“Will you be okay?”

“I hope so.”

Not sure why, but I left your words hanging. So unlike me. 

Ten days later, you didn’t come in or call. So unlike you my neck hairs raised.

Things I’ll miss: your ready smile, gentleness, intense knowledge, disgusting chips, sense of humor. Not in that order. 

The dolphins swam in your honor last night. Did you feel it, too? 

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There’s a destructive and betraying disease out there, friends. Chronic Delression is cunning. It's often a secret. By asking if it was cancer, maybe he would have confided in me that it was not. He probably would have deflected anyway. Suicide leaves so much pain and unanswered questions.

The word at Thin Spiral Notebook was “Wish”. We could use or imply it. What I wish I would have asked, wish I would have pursued, wish I could have changed the inevitable.

100-Word Challenge: Diaries, To Keep or Not to Keep?

Journaling fills me with tremendous trepidation. I have five journals started in nooks and crannies. When I was young, my locked diary was cream-colored. My kids found it covered in socks, promptly picked, then giggled at mommy’s middle school yearnings. Sometimes I rant and vent and write about fictitious events. Other times, secrets.

Might be from a Reese Witherspoon movie, but I imagine being in the bathtub, eyes closed, sunk up to my chin in bubbles, when someone comes in waving my journal. I feel panic, helplessness and violation simultaneously. 

It hasn’t happened. Yet. It’s all too vulnerable though.

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In which we write 100 words using the prompt "Diary" thanks to Tara at Thin Spiral Notebook. I started two other entries, but, of course, they were too vulnerable ;-).