The Listener
They think because you are a writer you are not much of a listener and so you begin to recognize all of the great opportunities to be much more of a listener and then you shut your trap and get sucked into the whorls of her big wet brown eyes with Italianate eyebrows that spread and thicken at the edges and you notice her unassuming nose slightly shiny in the light and her voice because it mysteriously purrs a story of her life that you thought to ask her about but the myriad details stack up and she's so enticing that you forget the exact aim of your question and just choose to dive headfirst into those bottomless pools and are then laid out on an examining table while her words are ministrations of grace and acceptance that you've given her the green light and her stories wash all over you like patting hands and you are truly a happy listener.
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Author's Note
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There's a great rush of feeling in this piece. I like the dichotomy of writer/listener, because one of the products of his listening is this piece. Which of these two activities gets the edge? If you call it The Writer, you push the memory back and we read it as history. But you call it The Listener, so it could still be ongoing. But you use words like sucked and stack up and aim and dive and laid out, which add tension and a smidge of cynicism. Hmmm . . . .
Thanks Pia. Great compliment coming from you, a writer I truly admire...