Wrote this in workshop today. My chat buddies will recognize it. I had to search for a good prompt for the workshop timeframe as todays deserved a longer stint at the keyboard. I'm including every bit of what I wrote, even the starting whine because it's important to understand that sometimes you just have to show up and start and when you do, the rest will eventually start to flow. Here's what happened:

March 21, 2004

Write for 10 minutes from the following:

Person: A boxer
Object: Papers
Place: A hospital room
Theme: Uncertainty

What is the matter with me today? I can't get a start. I need to back up and get a running start on...on... Clicking through prompts is not writing. Hands to the keyboard. Keep writing. Don't think. Hey that's easy. No thinking just doing, letting the words come from brain to screen. Ugg. I have on my screen a prompt about a boxer. Maybe he's of Irish descent. Red hair of course, blue eyes, short and compact. Every bit of him is muscle. He's in a hospital room. But not for what you'd originally think. He's fine. He's visiting someone. Who? His daughter. His daughter that he hasn't seen for eight years. His wife didn't want him to box to support the family. It scared her and she couldn't take the anxiety. So she asked him to leave and not come back, which he did. It was easy at the time to leave the baby. He hadn't been around much in the early days and she seemed somewhat afraid of him. Cried uncontrollably whenever he tried holding her. It made him feel small and diminished somehow, as if the infant could sense some strong character flaw that made it impossible for him to hold a real job. That flaw connected to the temper that cost him in so many ways. So instead of being home and feeling small, he stepped into the ring and felt powerful, and thus he began his travels, sent his money home, but never heard from his wife one way or the other as to if it arrived, how it was used, how the baby was. Until two weeks ago.

Now here he stood feeling dirty in the sanitized atmosphere of the hospital. He couldn't believe the girl sleeping in the bed was his daughter. She wasn't compact and flailing about looking for something to suck on. That was how he remembered her. She was a young girl, with a head full of tight black curls, just like his. The curls. The color was her mother's. She was pale and thin as one would expect, as sick as she was. Her thick lashes rested against her cheek. He shifted his weight from side to side and wondered where her mother was, what he should do. He looked for other traces of himself in her, and prayed he wouldn't find them.

There was a soft footfall behind him and he turned. All at once she filled his view, the same beautiful girl he had fallen madly for. Maybe there were a few small lines in her face that hadn't been there before. There was a worry in her eyes that went so deep it touched his own heart.

They just looked at each other for awhile, uncomfortable. He didn't know whether to shake her hand or reach out and gather her up in his arms. Instead he stood in silence, staring.

"I have papers," she said. His heart caught in his throat because he was sure she meant divorce papers, and in this instant in time he knew that wasn't what he wanted.

"You'll have to sign these so they can test you and see if you're a match, John. Oh, how I pray...