WINTER 2006-07 SHORT FICTION CONTEST

FIRST PLACE WINNER

Engraved on Styrofoam
by Lauri Griffin

Hoping for answers, Allie pulled the hidden envelope from the back of the drawer. She wanted to do something for him before she left. Inside the envelope, his words on the papers crowded, brushing against her fingers – words etched into broken bits of dirty-white takeout containers, scribbled across fast-food sacks, the colored edges of old flyers. Her fingers itched to paint their random shapes.
The first poem she knew by heart.

branches
reach
warm light
yearn grow
 
She’d wanted to show it to someone, but to who? Not to her family. And she was sure no one in the office would understand. If someone laughed or thought it strange then she wouldn’t be able to see the magic in the words anymore; the letters would rearrange themselves into scribbles on trash. As long as the words remained a secret, she could feel herself as a branch, could feel the sun, the reach toward warmth and growth. If she had a friend here, she would explain how right the poem was for her; how she yearned for real light, not these fluorescent bulbs. And space, she needed space, not this four foot square where she couldn’t even see the windows – and she very much needed more than the life her parents had neatly planned out for her.

So what could she give him? She only had two days left at this summer job, earning college money. Until this summer she’d had no opinion on filing cabinets, the price of coffee, poetry or the homeless.

Three months ago, she’d walked through the city relishing the air, the freedom. Already, the repetitive filing had erased the grownup feel of the job. She’d walked fast, trying to erase the sight of files in her head. Waiting for the light to flash to “Walk”, she’d been startled by a voice near her ear.

“Poem, miss?” He’d held out a battered cap filled with change and scraps of paper – a combination collection plate and raffle box. He’d shaken the cap, jangling the money. “Go ahead, pick one out.”

She’d noticed his eyes first – blue and bloodshot. Eyes that crinkled up at the edges like a drawing of Santa. He had the beard too, but it was uncontrolled, and dirty gray instead of white. What hair he had left clung to his scalp, streaks of pink showing through the gray. Divided between fear and not wanting to be rude, Allie had plucked a paper from the upturned hat, dropped in a quarter and hurried away as the light changed.

Now she had two days left. Now she knew the name of a homeless man, and considered him if not actually a friend, almost a friend – certainly a person. Now, most lunch hours she walked to the square to talk to him, to sit and watch his gnarled fingers grip a twig of knife-sharpened pencil while he wrote words on scraps. She missed him when it rained, and she wondered what he did during bad weather, how he stayed warm, and where he slept. He’d told her not to worry, that people like him managed.

He seemed more sad and lost than crazy. She couldn’t imagine giving poems away. If she were a writer, she’d copy the words, have a collection of her works. Sometimes she dreamed of having a collection of her own paintings.

She shook her head. Business school, not art school was the plan. Of course she’d never be homeless; she’d always have a job, always have a home. But the tradeoff was she’d never have the time or freedom to catch poems like leaves falling from a tree, and give them away like the wind, for free.

* * * * *

 “Hi, Howard. I brought you lunch.”

He leaned against an ancient tree, the leaves shading his face. His eyes flickered open. “Did you now?”

“Tomorrow’s my last day,” Allie reminded him, afraid that next week he would be confused, missing her and the food.

He tore into the sandwich and Allie looked away. Today he smelled sour, his clothes needed washing. Would it offend him if she bought him soap, shampoo?

 “Do you need anything? Is there anything I can bring you?”

He looked up his lunch. “Do you have a pencil? Been awhile since I found a pencil.”

She shook her head, “Sorry.”

He shrugged.

She wondered at his world. Did he realize she’d return to a whole world of pencils?

* * * * *

Allie checked the clock. Outside the sky threatened rain. Inside, the office felt artificially cold, fakely bright. Her last day, one hour until lunch, and for the moment she’d caught up on filing. She sat at her desk, wondering about the box of pencils. Too much of a present would offend him.

She’d considered paper, but even a notepad seemed wrong – straight edges weren’t right.

She spread his poems on her desk. Some had the words lined-up straight enough to make any English teacher proud. On others, the words were scattered, lilting up and down, starting not at a margin – but at any point, as if the wind might lift them and they’d float down to mean something else.

She wondered what he would do if she typed his words, presented these poems to him, all clean and lined up. But no. Typing them, putting margins on them would kill their impact, their magic.

* * * * *

At the park Allie hurried to find Howard. “Today’s my last day,” she reminded.

He pulled a paper from his pocket. “A special one for you.”

dream
be

Allie blinked, unsure what to say.

 “About to rain.” He gathered the money from his cap, dropping the coins in his pocket. He shook the cap; scraps of paper floated to the ground, the breeze tumbling them over the grass.

“They’ll blow away,” Allie warned.

He looked up into the trees. “So they will.”

“Don’t you want to keep them?”

“There’ll be other ones tomorrow.” He brushed his hands against his pockets, a gesture left over from another time, as if he were looking for his glasses or keys. “You’d best get to work before this rain catches you, Miss Allie. You learn everything you can at this college of yours. And come see me sometime, won’t you?”

“Of course.” She reached into her purse, and brought out not the box, but just one pencil.

He smiled as she handed it to him. He took the plain yellow pencil, and weighed it in his hands. “That’s a real nice one. I thank you.”

On the way back to work she stuck the rest of the pencils in odd places – on ledges, beside windows, in a crack of a concrete planter. Before she went inside, she opened the envelope and poured the poems into her hand. The wind swirled them up into the sky. She saw with a flash the painting she would make – random shapes in the wind, like clouds against the summer sky.

Underneath those poem shapes would be the dark boxes of buildings, their windows a mirror of clouded blue. Underneath everything would be her, arms stretched wide, reaching to the sun.

Lauri Griffin is a mother of three, a gifted/talented resource teacher, and coordinates a literacy program. Visit her blog Lauri's Reflections at www.laurireflections.blogspot.com for her contemplations on life, writing, and motherhood.