Februray 2020 Flash Lit #9 – Some Assembly Required

“’Why,’ said the Dodo, ‘the best way to explain it is to do it.’  (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter-day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)” Alice's Adventure in Wonderland, Chapter 3

Louisa, with the part of her brain that was not occupied with the pressing business of continuing to breathe in and out around the invisible weight pressing into her chest, wondered whether it was better or worse that the chairs were so uncomfortable.  There was a hard plastic lip around the seat that cut painfully into her thighs.  Design, overuse, or simple reluctance kept the back of the chair from supporting her back, except for the ridge at the very top that prodded her shoulder blades like an admonishing parent.  Discomfort on such a basic level distracted from the overarching despair.

The other participants fidgeted in their seats, too.  One woman had come in her blue rocket-patterned pajama pants and an enormous gray sweatshirt.  A kid in a black t-shirt under a flannel shirt scratched at the scars from his last suicide attempt.  An older man seemed determined to stare a hole in the gray industrial carpet.  None of them met each other’s eyes.

There were two moderators for the group.  The man wore blues, a chambray shirt, faded jeans.  He looked neither crisp nor wrinkled, which was somehow comforting.  The woman, older, had a brush of gray hair and peered out from a nest of nubby natural fiber garments like an intelligent and artistic bird preparing to nurture whatever eggs came her way.  Louisa noticed that she brought her own cushion to throw on the seat of her chair.

It was the man who spoke.  His voice was higher than Louisa expected, but rippling.  He congratulated everyone for making it to the meeting.  He said his name was Mike and that he and Carol would be facilitating the next six weeks.  “We hope to give you tools,” he said.

“And you can build your own new life with them,” Carol said.

Louisa wrote those words down in the margin of her handout, hoping they were true.