—READY AS I’LL EVER BE

 

Prompted

The writing prompt is sick of being stuck in ink, sick of being stared at and used like a sex worker who gets stiffed after the fact, so the writing prompt grows a pair (of legs) and walks through me like an apparition, only noticeable when it brushes one of my internal organs, but since I flunked science and biology, I don’t know the name for most of my gluey insides though I can feel the writing prompt setting up shop within my ribs, building a campfire, about to perfectly toast a triplet of S’mores dangled by a snapped tree twig, and the writing prompt seems satiated enough, angst-free whistling a Bee Gees tune, You Should Be Dancing, and after a while I jump in with piping falsetto that would make Barry Gibb proud so that it feels like the writing prompt and I are now both boogying across my chest cavity, inside the bone ossuary, taking turns doing dancefloor splits and pointing our index fingers heavenward or toward a ceiling that’s not there, and after a few hours when I should be exhausted, the writing prompt and I slow dance to a Bruno Mars song about forgetting to buy flowers, and both of us are weeping like forlorn boy scouts who can’t figure out how to tie the right kind of knot, so I whisper, It's okay, everybody needs someone, because I saw some French actor say that in subtitles once, and the writing prompt whispers back, Write it down, and I say, What? That’s stupid, and the prompt says, It’s not stupid to everyone, and I say, But—, and the prompt says, I’m not going to tell you again.