Today’s post, At a Fork in the Road, is based on a writing prompt I shared last week in the Daily Drafts & Dialogues Writers group. Hopefully, it helps spur your creativity today, too.
Writing Prompt: At a Fork in the Road
Write a scene based on this photo of a woman standing at a fork in a road. Does she go left or right? Why?
At a Fork in the Road by K.E. Creighton
If I go right, it’s five miles until I reach Bennie’s Burritos truck. If I go left, it’s three miles uphill until I reach a bench by a lake where I can think without interruption.
What should be a simple decision about which path to take for my run today isn’t simple because I found out an hour ago that my best friend has stage-four cancer. And I don’t have a clue what will make this pit in my stomach go away. Rigorous exercise? Quiet contemplation? Greasy food? Nothing seems adequate.
Eventually, I go left. I leave my earbuds in my pocket. I don’t need electronica, I need to be surrounded by the sounds of nature.
As I climb the terrain, I remember celebrating her twelfth birthday at the roller rink (she hated the streamers), and her twentieth birthday in Cancun (so much of that trip is still a blur). I remember how she drove all night to be there when my first post-college boyfriend dumped me at his cousin’s wedding. And I remember her showing up in plaid pajamas with dark circles under her eyes the night my daughter was born, even though she had to give an important presentation to a major client the next morning.
A lifetime of memories stream through my mind as I run uphill with the chirpping and warbles of sparrows keeping me company. And when I reach the bench by the lake, I can’t sit down to catch my breath. I need to keep moving. So, I turn around and run back toward the fork in the road. Once I reach it, I’ll decide what to do next. I hope.
All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton and Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. All names and locations referred to are the product of the author’s imagination and are used entirely for fictional purposes. Any similarities to real-life persons or places are purely coincidental.
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