The Girl Who Had Everything by Steve Marc Gerson; Water, Flat

The Girl Who Had Everything

Next to her bed, on a brown table, sat a potted plant that had not been watered in weeks. It was as brown as a cigar stub smoked down to ashes. On the table also sat a glass of water, flat, one could even say dry, if wet could be dry.

As she sat on her bed, she saw from her window dusk arriving on the winter solstice. She was 35 and alone.

"Remember?" she asked her napping cat, it responding as cats do with nonchalant indifference.

"Remember when?" but she could go no further.

Everyone said she had had promise. After all, she had graduated number one in her homeschool class. She had read more books than any of her acquaintances, having more time to fill, writing detailed synopses in her diary that no one would read. She had traveled the world as a teen, her dad holding her hand when she crossed unbusy streets in unbusy villages. She learned three languages with no one to speak to. She went to college but left early, stating that none of the other students were “serious.” They graduated. She watched them have full lives.

She had accumulated more of everything that no one wanted.

Now, she was alone, contemplating her life, as empty as the box of dreams on her bedside table, the box becoming cobwebbed. Dead motes gathered in its brown corners.

Turning to look out her window, she saw what appeared to be the night's first star.

"I wish I may, I wish. . . ." She stopped, realizing the vision wasn't a star but the navigation light on a distant plane. The light was blinking. The plane was flying away, somewhere. The light dimmed. The light disappeared.

And dusk diminished into darkness.

Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life's dissonance. He has published in many journals plus his 11 chapbooks: Once Planed Straight; Viral; And the Land Dreams Darkly; The 13th Floor; What Is Isn’t; There Is a Season; Have Not; Who Am I Today; Dystopia; Grim; and Through Shadows.

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