This is a Story I Wrote:
It Must Have Been a Sunday

i couldn't be too sure, but i think it must have been a sunday when it became obvious that there was no way she could be anything she wanted to be anymore. emily had been working at the saw mill for six years, and in her spare time she made blue objects. sometimes earrings, sometimes books, now and again a pencil or a hat. she could make anything so long as the thing could be blue.

all she wanted to do since she was a little girl was make yellow objects, but it came naturally to her to make blue anything and so that is what she did when she was not working at the saw mill. nobody had any idea as to what her specific responsibility at the saw mill was. nobody realy could think of a reason to ask, so they didn't

soon enough, everyone in town moved higher up to the neighboring mountains because of the mudlsides. the mudslides had been happening since the town was a town. since samuel kitch had named it kitchtown. but now the homes were falling sideways, plates of food crashing downward, full of uneaten food and pajama pants were everywhere. the children in the town didn't cry, because they had seen so many mudlsides. they would grab their plastic hard hats. They were all the same kind on account of the donation of an enormous construction company.

i think it was on a sunday when toddler and grandpa alike were wearing those construction hats that everyone but emily moved up onto the mountain where the mud wasn't sliding and took their favorite things with them. Thomas's was a wrench. He loved that wrench and sometimes he wore it in his pocket even though it made his shirt sag down like something sad and old. He never used it to fix anything. he just loved it. the things you love are not always useful, i guess.

emily was all alone at the sawmill, wearing a construction hat when nobody else showed up. she had taken a fifteen hour nap only to discover that the desk in her room was sideways just like her house, but she went to work, thinking nothing of the mudslide just like everyone else usually did.

with no one in town delivering mail or putting milk into coffee, emily felt plain silly wearing that construction hat. she threw it into a pile of garbage that lay in front of the saw mill. samuel kitch had put the pile of garbage out there seventy years ago and nobody knew who he expected to pick it up. the town was so small that they had no sanitation department. all they had was a community compose heap and a little red pick-up truck that thomas sometimes used to take trash that would outlive the trees to some other town's landfill.

now the trash was wearing emily's construction hat, and i bet it felt just as silly as she did.

emily didn't know what to do with the quiet. somebody had turned off the big machine that was supposed to make a lot of noise, and now she was missing its company. she cleared her throat to sing. nothing came out. the little machine inside her throat must have been turned off, too. funny, she hadn't noticed until now.