Dead Darlings

This is a place for me to bury my darlings.
There comes a time when you have to highlight a sentence or a paragraph, let your finger hover over the delete key for a breathless moment, then ruthlessly behead a passage that you loved.

For one reason or another it had to go.

I can’t imagine the agony that came before the miracle of word processors. Crumpled pages and oceans of ink murdering writers’ beloved words. I shudder to think. It’s a comfort knowing that mine will be haunting me still, from this their semi-final resting place. I say semi-final because you may notice one or two disappear from time to time as I dig up the occasional corpse and fling it into something new.

For your pleasure, and my vanity, please peruse this solemn mausoleum at your leisure:

• The faint aroma of bleach and the ozone smell of dust kicked up by the vacuum mingled with the savory notes of a roast dinner. These scents combined to make up the delicious bouquet of Sunday nights, and the weekend’s death, for as long as I can remember.
  
  
• I put my arms around her and squeezed, feeling the bones in her chest press against mine. It was what I imagine playing bagpipes would feel like.
  
  
• The chrysalis of the Condemned’s execution sack would move with the writhing and twisting of a moth’s struggle for life. Then the beasts would descend and tear the pupa to pieces.
  
  
• The echo of my voice came back to me warped and lifeless as if the room stole it, amplified it, and returned its frozen corpse to my ears.
  
  
• I learned Latin between Jonathan’s panting gasps as we ran about the parish. I picked it up quickly. The sounds in my mouth felt strange and exhilarating, important. Recalling what he taught me was easy, if I needed a word or phrase I would imagine the place where I’d learned it – crossing a creek stone by stone behind his sure and nimble footing, syllables would tuck their way into my memory with each of our hops.
  
• This time his nose flattened against the rectangle of his cheek. It seemed like I had a fish’s view of this dickhead squishing his face against an aquarium. I stifled a laugh, but not well.