Workshop Write

Prompt:

Person: An scientist
Object: A glass
Place: Kitchen
Theme: Yearning

His brand new masters degree was propped up on the mantle. Someone in the course of the night had framed it and cleared off all the other stuff that had been up there. It was a centerpiece at the moment. Paul Hooper stared at the way the gold on it shimmered in the dimmed lighting trained on it still. It was quiet, finally, with the remnants of cigarettes and stale drinks littered on just about every flat surface. They'd celebrated until three in the morning, and now that the sun would be up in a few short hours he thought he'd be able to sleep. Wrong.

All he could do was sit in the dark and listen to those other lessons that churned through his mind. Those lessons that hadn't come with the degree. "Not all that glitters is gold." "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it." "When a person focused too intently on one thing it was easy to lose sight of things that were equally, if not more, important."

Maybe some milk would do the trick.

He made his way to the kitchen and dug in the cabinet until he found the glass that his mother had always used when she was trying to help him get to sleep with warm milk. It was thick and heavy with a lip that at one time had accommodated a top that screwed on. Back years ago when it had been a jelly jar. The weight of it was satisfying in his hand. The light in the refrigerator nearly blinded him, and he found the cold of it jarring. All his senses seemed to be on hypersensitivity at this point. That's how he knew he was tired beyond reason. He couldn't even stand to look for the chocolate syrup.

The milk had to be heated. There was no way cold milk would do any good. So he added a couple teaspoons of sugar and some vanilla and set it to spin in the microwave for a bit. Vanilla milk was something Sandra had taught him.

Paul padded to the table and sat down to find himself in the midst of the items that had been on the mantle over the fireplace. His first instinct was to go back to the living room instead, but he was too tired to get up again. The tiny laces on the pair of shoes begged to be fingered and tugged. Then there was the doily all in a heap. It needed to be flattened out, and his mother would have been starching it first thing in the morning, but Paul had no idea whatsoever how to go about doing that. He contented himself with the flattening part.

Two lavender tapers stood tall in crystal candlesticks. Sandra loved anything lavender--the color, the scent, even the taste of it. He had expressly forbidden its use in anything she fed him, thinking it was a foolish obsession, but now he wondered if she'd been here to massage his neck with that lavender oil she loved so much if he'd be sleeping instead of nursing a glass mug of vanilla milk all alone in his house.

He'd had company all evening, but it wasn't really company. Not the kind that fed the soul and kept you talking till sunup just because you didn't want to miss a minute together. That's the kind of celebration that would have made this day complete.

Why couldn't he have remembered that in the middle of this struggle so that the end could have been satisfying for everyone.

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Yuck. I really don't like this one. It's so flat.....