Cactus
A story told about a man from many aspects of his own
writing including letters, emails, texts, facebook posts, and more. All
backstory is related through written accounts exampled above, all frontstory
after finding the cactus and beginning to make a positive change in his life is
chronicled purely through action and forward facing or present introspection.
It was a stupid, stunted, weird
little thing, but somehow Brandon Mosley knew it would be different. The cactus
was about as tall as a bookmark, swollen at the top in a toadish bulge as
though someone had planted a particularly unfriendly gourd bottom side up in a
tacky yellow flowerpot. He found it outside the coffee shop before unlocking
(precisely at 5 a.m.) sitting damply on the step in the indigo shade of a Nashville
dawn.
He hadn’t
had much at all to own for himself. A dinky studio apartment kept his shabby
belongings shouldered together on the fifth floor of an apartment that lacked
even one positive aspect good real estate should possess.
He picked
up the cactus, enjoying the weight of the cool, damp ceramic against his palm.
He gently touched a needle at the top, feeling the tiny sting. The bell rang as
he shouldered the door open and stepped into the darkness.
“That’s a
good pet for you, Bran.” Alice was twenty-one, a graphic design major at Vanderbilt
and weekend evening barista. The morning regulars had come and gone, the shop
rich with the smell of French roasts and the rattle of mixers, the muted roar of
the milk steamer. Now it was quiet, nearly dead, Brandon’s shift slowing to a
close.
“Why?” The
cactus had drawn some glances, the occasional comment from patrons as it sat
next to the cash register.
“I dunno.”
She flipped her highlighted hair and made herself a venti macchiato with extra
caramel. Brandon studied the comment the way an archeologist might a new
artifact: turning it this way and that in his head.
“You should
change the pot, though. It’s ugly.”
“I don’t
really know anything about plants,” Brandon admitted. It hadn’t occurred to him
you could change a plant’s pot. It
seemed an immutable aspect of the plant, like trying to change its root
structure. As soon as he mentally admitted this, the thought seemed silly.
“It’s a cactus,” Alice said, perching on the
stool behind the counter. “How hard can it be?”
At home
Brandon booted his laptop. It was an old, stuttering, flickering antique of a
thing, as much a relic of college as his spring rush t-shirt and dusty game
console. Cactuses were hardy, he found, but not invincible. They needed some
water, but not too much. Sunlight, but not an abundance of it. He placed the
little thing on his windowsill and stared at it a moment before pulling a
bottled water out of the fridge and pouring a little into the soil. After
contemplating his new roommate a moment, he drank from the bottle.
Elyse
A Poem
Brandon Mosley
You, of golden skin and azure eye
I, of darkened brow and shaded
demeanor
Rich with gloom but lightened
By your elemental presence
I knew nothing
You touched my cringing skin
Reeled me close
Like a fish
My emotions tight
Bruises beneath purpled skin
Then
You left
Moonheart
Spoken Word
Brandon Mosley
You can race the moon two hundred
miles across the sand, but we’ll never know the true impact of a compass
against ocean waves. Brokenhearted people staring at the same celestial body
night after night dreaming in tears of a world where the loneliness of a lunar
goddess does not somehow mirror their own. The stillness of a dead pond, rotten
wood torn straight from the heart of a stilled oak unbroken by the peaceful
distraction of ten thousand souls breathing their last in an undiscovered
unison. In this hope I draw my breath that some foggy morning the brassy lungs of
portly Zephyr shall unstill my curtains and draw new light into the bleakness
of a dying man’s unglazed eye.
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