Creative Writing: An hour in the life of an English major

It smells like newly cut grass and cigarette smoke in the quad behind the Interdisciplinary building, and I can hear the quiet humming of the mower ahead of me. There’s a speckled shade falling on the pages of my book as well as the occasional leaf or particle of pollen. I look up from my book at the lighted concrete pathway in front of me and squint at the greens of the trees and the brightness and the reflections in the windows on the opposing building, because I’ve been looking at shaded black and white for ten minutes.

I see a cat. I arbitrarily decide it’s a girl. Her body is a soft and slightly matted grey while her face is brown and her eyes a dull blue. She’s sneaking along in the dirt beside me, her belly pressed against the grass clippings and cigarette butts. She lays her hips and then her side lazily down.

I watch her. She doesn’t look at me. I read my book.

It’s an essay entitled “A List of Nothing in Particular” by William Least Heat-Moon, whose name I love. “The night, taking up the shadows and details, wiped the face of the desert into a simple, uncluttered blackness until there were only three things: land, wind, stars.” I look at her. She has been cleaning her temple with the side of her paw for 10 minutes, never mind the tangle of leaves and pebbles I see on the underside of her belly. I stand, shuffling the books in my bag, keeping one eye on her to see if she moves in response to the noise and motion. She licks her lips, looking out towards the sunny walkway. I clear my throat. She blinks slowly.

I sigh and as I zip up my backpack, the face of my watch catches in the dappled light filtering through the leaves in the tree above me and reflects a glitter of light into her eye. Her eyes widen and her face snaps towards me in a sudden and ridiculous fear. She stands, hunches her back, her shoulders arrowheads underneath her skin. I laugh a little too loudly. She runs, darting in front of a sluggish boy on a skateboard who doesn’t even notice her to get away from me and my watch face.

“To say nothing is out here is incorrect; to say the desert is stingy with everything except space and light, stone and earth is closer to the truth.”