A Piece of Writing

I have a bad habit I'm trying to start, she thought to herself. She wrote in her journal with her right hand while her left hand ungracefully held the cigarette. From time to time she took a swig of the hot brown liquid in the paper to go cup beside her. People started filtering into the park: teenagers off school early and partial families with their dogs - their better half perhaps still slaving away at work. She felt her perceived privacy slipping away. Dogs circled around her bench. She wondered if they somehow sensed her shame hidden in her cotton satchel. Two fellow coffee addicts (perhaps a couple) entered the park, coffee tumblers in tow. Lola, the Standard Poodle and her friend, the Australian Shepherd caught up in a game of catch me if you can, darted out of the park and into the road in the low traffic residential street adjacent to the park. No harm came to them; however, their discretion caused enough alarm that their human dictators saw to it that they left their bench if only for a moment. Lola and Aussie's embarrassing behaviour was so unruly and uncharacteristic of the other canine that frequented the park, that passerby stopped to take notice, their jaws dropped sufficiently.

Cyclists entered the park and with each entry, she looked up and gazed across the park with hopeful eyes. She thought if she wished for it hard enough that he would appear. If he did pass by, she didn't see him. She didn't have eyes in the back of her head, afterall. And she'd never complete any piece of work worth any literary value if she didn't focus on the task at hand - what was supposed to be of utmost importance. The very breath of her existence was to write, yet she afforded herself very little time to cultivate her craft, her guilt costing her one of the few things she truly desired from life. She wondered why she wasted her precious dollars on something that smelled and tasted so vile. She rubbed her left hand between her thighs for warmth. Despite the sunshine beating down on her right shoulder, the spring air remained chill. Her eyes roamed around the park for him a moment more. She suddenly felt alone; her earlier complaint of lost privacy vanquished. In some ways, she yearned to see him stroll through the park with some new girl the way he had with her the previous fall. It would pain her to see him with someone new, but this she could grasp, at least. His body language that betrayed his speech, she could not. Her body temperature dropped rapidly, as she doubted her instincts about almost everything she thought she knew. She didn't know if there was a correlation on the rise. A final search before retreating to the warmth proved fruitless. She was craving the attention of a male suitor, her preference for a certain male evident. She wondered if her passion for companionship outweighed her passion for writing. She certainly knew where her thoughts pooled much of the time. As she collected herself and her associated belongings, she pondered emptying her tote of her newly re-acquired addiction into the trashcan nearby. However great her guilt, she knew undoubtedly that such a transaction could not be completed at that time.

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