STORYTELLER SHORT FICTION FRAGMENTS
Old Woman on a Bench by the Sea
Somewhere in the world, an old woman sitting on a bench
This is part of a novel, chapter 1. To see all published chapters, go here.
1 Prologue
Somewhere in the world, an old woman on a bench, near the sea. She’s not sick, but she’s old. And she knows she’s going to die. She does not think much about it.
She went down here from her house, to rest her eyes on the sea, to think.
She thinks of her daughter, who lives a few hundred meters further up the street, in a bad apartment, in a dilapidated house. She would have liked her daughter to live in a better house, that she could change houses with her daughter, because she does not have it easy. The daughter has poor health, and in the winter when the cold creeps in, she gets so much worse. And then she no longer has her husband.
She thinks about what it was like before he left. She has tried to talk to her daughter about it. What happened before he left. But she no longer dares. She sees that it is difficult, it hurts her daughter to talk about it, so she lets it be.
At times, she thinks of her husband, who died many years ago. She notices that she thinks of her husband more often now. And she thinks about what it is, what this life is.
She thinks a good deal about her life. And she thinks of her husband, and what the two had in common.
For so many years she has been alone. The years overlap as new ones arrive. It’s almost like she’s coming out of the count now. — How old has she become now? Huff, yes. Approaching a hundred. And she can still remember herself, running on bare feet in the grass in her parents’ garden.
“Yes yes,” she thinks, “life, that’s what it is.”
A draft for a developing novel, # 1
Short prose fragments will appear here at irregular intervals, as the writing of fiction progresses. For the latest follow me here: https://oivind47.medium.com/
© Øivind H. Solheim , @oivind47, hiker, teacher, author of novels, poetry, articles, essays, short fiction and experimental writing. [email protected]