I’ve been using writing prompts lately as a method of transitioning from whatever else I’ve been doing in my day into my writing practice. I keep them pretty loose. This one started as a list of new things I’ve been loving lately.
The New Things I Love, Spring 2022
Outside, my neighbour tells me that the fire alarm always goes off because someone in the other building puts metal dishes in their microwave. We laugh together. He bends and pets my dog. I’ve always thought he looks like an older Tony Leung (my neighbour not my dog). Once, in the elevator, he told me that he used to have big dogs when he was a young man, a Norwegian breed I wasn’t familiar with, but now he says he’s too old for that kind of thing.
I tried on a purple dress in a store the other day. The girl who hangs it up for me tells me that she has a name for the colour: Seratonin Booster. When I look back at the dress, it seems perfectly obvious that that’s the colour. It’s too tight, but I almost buy it anyways, and I would have if the money could have just gone straight to her and the accuracy of her voice.
Back to my dog—she’s usually very independent. The neighbours laugh when we burst out of the fire escape door for our first walk of the day, Lulu panting and pulling and spinning at the end of the leash. She always looks like she’s got somewhere to be, they say. I considered getting her a trainer when I first brought her home, someone to teach her how to walk politely on a leash, to not breathe heavily and excitedly every time she sees another dog or a roller suitcase, but then I thought about how short her time on this earth is, and it seemed kind of sad to spend a minute of it trying to domesticate her further. She was already four years old when she came into my life. And us, here, in this world where there comes a time where you’re too old for that kind of thing, whatever that kind of thing might be.
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