Today’s flash fiction prompt: Write about mourning. This one hits a little hard. Lots of loss suffered in the last few years.
Broken Signs
There is a giant sign that lights up at night on a sidewalk in my neighborhood. During the day, the sign reads ‘Donuts.’ For anyone passing by it signifies, without issue, that the establishment a few feet behind it provides, well, donuts. That is the sign’s job, and during the day, it does it well.
If you’re a local, you know there’s a donut shop behind the sign. Some days you may not even notice the sign at all. You don’t need to. Because the sign, and the shop, have always been there, and you have no reason to expect that to change.
But every night, on my way to bowling, or the grocery store, or to my Aunt Patty’s house, the sign reads very differently. It lights up to advertise to passing cars that there’s a shop a few feet away, but instead of reading ‘Donuts’ the sign reads ‘o uts.’ It’s a trigger for those of us with OCD leanings, and a frequent topic of discussion at community gatherings in this teeny tiny town.
Some wish the owner would fix the sign; after all, it’s been broken for years. Others draw comfort from its dysfunction, finding it novel. If a conversation turns sour, you can always find common ground by badmouthing the Donut sign with broken lights.
Losing a loved one is a lot like being a sign with broken lights. During the day, you can pretend that nothing’s wrong, because you can function. Never mind that the light in you has died, that important elements that made you a whole are missing.
During the day, you’re often praised for your ability to function, then subsequently forgotten (or just forgotten). But when night comes, and it always does, people notice. And your brokenness becomes a source of idle chatter, rolled eyes, or angry exhalations. Why is she still broken? Hasn’t it been a long time already? Enough’s enough.
As if you chose to be broken. As if a broken sign can simply fix itself.
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