Where Sentences Go to Die
Proof I was paying attention, even when I wasn't writing.
All I ever do is write things I cannot say out loud, born of love, hate or confusion, and then call them short stories and novels.
But sometimes even those things are half formed, with crevices and corners occupied by words, phrases, sentences, ill-worked descriptions, paragraphs of gibberish, that I am sure will never be resurrected or recycled. They were written while on walks, on the train, in the middle of family dinners and middles of conversations.
Oh, I visit them. They are not unloved. Sometimes they shock me with their honesty and sometimes they confuse me with their brevity. They live in my Notes app or at the bottom of my tote bags or on the margins of my Pukka pads which I use for longhand. I read them, I smile, I feel inspired to use them and I promise myself that I will use them and then go and write all new lines for the next story.
Lina from The Stories Club refers to them as a graveyard of sentences. Her post made we want to give mine a bit of sunshine.
A lot of these are from one of my completed manuscripts—a love story about a military man and a pacifist who spend years circling each other across countries and convictions. Some I’ve used in my short stories already, but did not have the courage to delete. Some are stray observations. Some are just instructions I left for myself and never followed. Number 13 is true of my husband. Number 6 is four words long and I still think it could be an entire essay.
A man on the tube is reading The Sun and Her Flowers. He seems the sensitive type because he has tears in his eyes. But it could just be allergies.
Did you love me? / Like a madman.
Write “why did you make time for me?” in the chapter where he leaves.
Why do you need another degree? / It’s our coping mechanism.
Someone or something that makes your heart or gut go kulu kulu. Maybe that’s just gastric distress. Or diarrhoea. Maybe.
Describe eating with hands.
Condemn the Polaroids to the fireplace. Condemn me to the fireplace.
Add a funny joke after she goes through the abortion. Like a “delete” button.
There were two lives. One at home where she had to speak in Punjabi. And another in school with Chris and English and maths and the school disco.
He loved her too early. She loved him too late.
The light from the window makes a halo of the brick jambs. The afternoon is quiet but not so quiet since I can hear the neighbours’ children pack up their SUV. For a trip, I imagine. Spring is knocking on the door. And instead of taking a walk in the park under the rare English sun, I have chosen to be buried deep under my unnecessary duvet and read a book about sexual violence.
She stared out at the land stretched in front of her and heard his voice from across three countries. The lazy comfort of his old friendship, the electric discomfort of his passion.
He cries when the flowers die.
Everyday I unblock you for five minutes at the crack of dawn. It’s like a secret I share with only myself. When those five minutes are up I quickly block you again lest the secret escapes my lips and you somehow hear it fifteen miles away.
Has she seen your ribby chest completely devoid of hair and thighs thinner than my arms?
I start reading a book with a cliffhanger just so I can go and dangle off the cliff. There are so many cliffs I’m dangling off right now.
The sky burst into flames above us. / Happy New Year, Usman, I said quietly. / My Uber driver met my eyes through the rearview mirror and replied, Happy New Year to you too.
Write something about intimacy in not speaking.
The musky smell emanating from your best friend, sat next to you in English class, that only comes from being clad in polyester uniforms in the sweltering heat of India.
The crumpled up purple Dairy Milk wrapper.
In another universe, I am not a soldier and you are not miles away running further away like the wind. In another universe I still have Appa and you still have Karan. In another universe we are not in halves.
Why? Because there’s not enough sky for both of us.
Egg fried rice that doesn’t have any egg.
I’ve lived in my head for the last fifteen years because that’s where you were stuck.
Sometimes when I lie in bed and stare out the window and I see a jet leave a white furry trail in the clouds behind, I think of you.
I don’t love too hard. But I loved you too hard.
I just thought I was getting a couple of days off work to laze about with my best mates. I was not expecting you.
People who live in consciousness don’t know what it’s like for fools to live in longing.
I don’t know if any of them will ever find a proper home. But I think there’s something to be said for the notes that don’t make it. The ones that are too raw or too small or too strange to belong anywhere except a list like this. They’re proof you were paying attention, even when you weren’t writing.
If you’ve got your own nothing-but-messy list of forgotten notes, I’d love to hear the best one that never found a home.
Happy writing!
Amrita