"My Life's Work"

“My Life’s Work”

Katelyn Honigsberg

She liked to fit people into the world like puzzle pieces. Watching their stories and personalities shift together perfectly complementing one another was amusing. It almost comforted the sad life she felt outside of her makeshift project. A certain sadness grabbed at her heart when she noted tomorrow she’d have to turn in the small globe.

Rumors had circulated of the other kids who tried to keep their worlds with them after the due date, how misfortune and ruin fell upon their made universes almost instantly.

She didn’t want that for her’s.

She didn’t want her little people that she had come to know become ashes that fell to their Earth’s ground.

Besides, she needed a good grade.

Her ears picked up the singing chorus of a church hymn in a small little building off the coast. The warm breeze brushed her cheeks as the people laughed and surfed against the curved water. An ache grew in her chest as the loud screams of riots in big cities only heightened. But it softened generously as a small babe squeezed the finger of a single mother who smiled down at her with gentle, loving eyes.

Wonderful, lovely things in her world. A dog ran across the street to his owner, his tongue flapping from the joy of a familiar face. Two young lovers holding each other close as they watched a movie on their couch. A child staring at her parents as they laughed over something tedious. A teenager who held her test grade up and celebrated like she had won the lottery.

There were parts of it she didn’t love. Somber endings to a bittersweet story. Crime and hate that she couldn’t fix no matter how hard she tried. Feelings of depression or sadness gripping her people like a snake finding a small prey.

A father holding his lifeless child while the mother was being stitched up on a delivery table. A young girl staring in horror at the hands of an elder reaching toward her. A couple broken by the unfaithful ways of their desires. An entire classroom crying over the loss of their class pet. A single father crying over a mountain of bills he can’t afford to pay. A respected scientist whose theory was proven illogical and unnecessary. The pain and grief of each story resonated deep in her heart. A pain unspoken to anyone festered in her lungs until breathing seemed like a curse upon her.

She didn’t want to hand this world over to her teacher.

Despite the suffering of her world, there was a beauty and serene peace in it. A call to action in every story of her people. Each one of them living and breathing and doing everything over again the following day. Held to a standard of perfection and falling short every time, but even though their chances are slim, they hold on to the glimpses of a better life. It moved her and changed the way she saw her own life.

And yet, the next day, when the teacher called her name to present the blessings or curses she had been tasked with creating she did. When the teacher asked her to leave her globe in the hands of her teacher’s assistant, despite the beauty of her world being her own creation and hard work, she handed it over. When the teacher told her to abandon her world and sit in her seat once more for the next student’s report she obeyed. From the corner of her eye as her classmate began his breakdown of his own globe, she watched as her teacher dropped the precious ball of life and love into a disposal bucket. Lost forever to the darkness of a mere project. The laughter and cries and brand new beginnings all coming to an end.

But she got an A.