Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: Free Write
Woodinville, y’all, where the wind bends trees over into worshipful poses, and grape vines like twine twist round them knotty poles. I met a man in the streets of Woodinville, wearing a cowboy hat on a string, it was hanging on his back because the clouds that day were fat like a kitchen momma in slippers and a nasty old robe. He told me, go into that saloon over there, they’ve got wine so nice you’ll want two bottles. But don’t drink ‘em both, son, save one for that sweet lady waiting for you, domicile-side. So I went into the place, all of that polished oak and shined-up brass, and laid down my ten dollars for four samples of Syrah. Each glass was more purple than the one before it, and I had a vintage mustache in no time.
I put one bottle in the back pocket of my jeans and walked out into the rain, one of those playful rains where winter plays summer dress-up. But some bully, probably an angel, said something mean and the clouds turned from gray to black. The rain turned to needles. The streets turned to slicked-up shit and I got lost wandering around the streets of Woodinville.
Fell down a few times, got mud on my jeans. Never did break that bottle of wine. A man on a horse tossed me a worn but clean blanket, and said not unkindly, go be a wino someplace else. But nothing sobers like a weather-shellackin’, and I was too shivered-up to be much good to Bacchus anymore. I found a path between some trees and plodded along and up a hill and into a dale and never knew even what a dale was before that.
Thunder in the distance, running away the way children’s laughter does from the park near my home and dusk threatens and I have to close the house windows against the dying light. But I was too all-moist for drying out. My boots clobbered my porch steps, and my old lady standing there in curlers, holding a rolling pin. Big grin on her face. We like make-believe in our marriage. I fished that bottle of wine out of my back pocket.
She snatched it up and me too, tossed one of us in the shower and the other in our latest can of trash. Ain’t it ironic, the best recovery from a soaking is a few hours in the tub.
Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Three