Calendar

Today is the day. It’s been marked my calendar for months. I don’t remember if it’s been six months or five, but either way, the day has come. Today is the cut off day that represents the time the editor-in-chief, Mr. Scognamiglio, for Kensington Publishing told me that he would need to read my manuscript. Of course, I know that he didn’t have his calendar marked with the date that he gets to contact Mr. Witt of Denver, that his mind is probably thinking more of Christmas, presents, a vacation, or something. However, it does mean I should have an answer relatively soon. Again, I’m not expecting a yes or even a maybe (I can’t help but hope) but at least I should hear something soon and then choose whatever step may be next. I think I will wait to contact him until the first week in January. Let the holidays die down, give him a chance to get back into the swing of things at his work. The last thing he needs (and the last way I need to be seen) is an over-exuberant, head-in-the-clouds pretend-author bombarding him when he is trying to get other stuff done.
I allow myself a taste of the fantasy of a positive reply. I start to imagine what sensations would go through my body and what might become of the book—what that might mean for future books. I quickly shut it off though. Don’t count your chickens. Don’t rely on that someone to continue to hold your hand and walk by your side. Still, the dream is there. The fantasy is there. The hand returns. The book slides onto shelves. I can sit at my laptop and feel like I’m not pretending and then get up and make dinner for the two of us.
Fantasy world.
Fantasy pieces, all.
For as dead as I feel inside most of the time. For as much as I have tried to squash (and for as much as the world has tried to squash), there seems to be one particle of me that can’t seem to fully wither into oblivion. Some delusional part of me that refuses to accept how the world really is. How pain is the only thing we are guaranteed. Maybe it’s only design is to remain to crush me further. But maybe, just maybe, its there so that there will be a part of me remaining when one of my hands is grasping a hard-cover novel and the other holding a hand. Maybe that fucking ridiculous, painful, irrational grain of hope is there because it is waiting to, it knows that it will, flourish. Maybe. I hope.