Two Words

Two words, just two words. But what were they?

The man stares at his image in the mirror. He doesn't remember. He desperately longs to reconnect with the pair of words, but he now feels they are gone.

No matter how hard or how easy he pursues the retreating words through the labyrinth of his mind, the two words are hopelessly, irretrievably gone.

--

He had made the cardinal sin. Never, ever, ever, assume you will remember later what the inspiration of the moment had handed you. When the muse spoke, you remembered, or if memory was a waning thing, you took notes. Inspiration rarely repeated herself.

An idea had arisen, and he had failed to honor it.

--

While cooking his sausages, some idea for a short story had landed in his head; it appeared as a two-word title. Often an entire story flowed out of a single thought. Once you had a premise, a what-if question, a strong opening sentence, a unique dilemma, or even a titillating title, your work as a midwife helping birth the idea became much easier.

'Oh, that's good,' some voice in his head exclaimed.

It was a wonderful thing when the raw idea felt so potent. Good writing was always a matter of rewriting, but when the seed idea was so good, you knew that the rewrite would only make it better.

And his intentions were true; he thought he would remember it later. He saw the entire structure of the story assemble itself, almost as if by magic, in his head.

But there had been wine. And rum before the wine.

Naturally, his memory wasn't operating at peak efficiency. It was the way of such things. Chemistry. Finally, so much of life and our experience of it was subject to the dance and interplay of molecules, colliding, cascading, and re-colliding in one's brain.

--

No matter how hard he tried, he could not remember the two-word pithiness that had fallen from the heavens before. It was gone.

It was only two words, a title, a title for a short story. One that almost wrote itself, so potent was the title.

--

He mourned its death as befitting a drunken author and resolves to do better next time.

--

When the gods smile down upon you, you let the sausage burn or turn them off as you jot down the heavenly gifts.

But the time for jotting down had come and gone. Now was the time of repentance and sorrowful regretting.

You never let the muse's call roll to voice mail. That was simply not done.

Surely, the next time, he would do better. Next time inspiration struck, he would abandon the sausages and take the notes as required.

--

His passion, only a hobby so far, was undeniable and deep-rooted, but underneath he realized it was immortality he sought through his writing. In publishing his fiction on various platforms and venues, he was hoping to find some consolation for the finitude and brevity of his lifespan. Not that his life felt brief. Not old, yet he felt as though he had lived for millennia.

He sees the opened packet of index cards on the kitchen counter. He resolves to do better. He vows to never be without two things: a pen and a short stack of index cards to record whatever blessings fell from wherever it was they originated. His mind was continuously asking, probing, testing, mixing, imagining. That was the facilitator for the ideas. Being forgetful was no excuse for not remembering inspiration.

Not wasting any time and fully intending to this new commitment, the man pockets several blank index cards and a ball-point pen in his back pocket.

He could do better; he would be better.

--

Originally published at http://storiesbyshawn.com on May 21, 2021.