Creative Writing #1: Reverse Writing

His name is Joe Smith, he lives with his wife Margaret in a small apartment. Their apartment looks like it was clipped out of a magazine from the 70’s and it smells like old rose petals. Their apartment bring back memories of when they were first married back in the early 70’s when having 8-track player, a harvest gold refrigerator, green shag carpet, macramé, and gold floral wall paper were the coolest things to have. Joe everyday would get up, take the subway to Central Park to play chess with his old friend Frank Willis. They go way back to when Joe first came to New York when he was only in his early 20’s. And when he started his new “big” time office job , they were office neighbors. Thanks to Frank, Joe would have never met his wife, Margaret of 40 plus years. They met at this house warming party for a fellow employee and Frank brought his girlfriend and her best friend Margaret. Neither of them had any intensions of finding love at the party, love just found them. I guess you can call it love at first sight and it’s just lasted for 40.

While he rode the subway he would read the newspaper to get this fill of what’s going on in the rest of the world. But on this particular day, he was lost in thought about his daughter. His daughter Sarah, who was going through a rough divorce, and Joe didn’t know what to do to help her. So instead of going to the park to play chess with old Frank, he was going to visit his daughter and spend sometime with his grandchildren. Maybe take them out for ice cream and go to the park, so Sarah could go to a meeting with some lawyers.

As he boards the subway, Joe remembers the long summer days when his “little girl” begged him to run through the sprinklers with her, take those long city walks to the ice cream parlor after softball practice, the nights when she would beg him to read just one more story before she went to sleep, and being her hero when she fell and scrapped her knee. All of Sarah’s early years Joe was able to fix anything in his daughter’s life with a kiss or a band-aid. But now that she’s all grown up, Joe can’t find a way to help her fix them. The thought of her husband leaving his “little girl” behind with their kids makes him upset and feeling helpless. You can’t fix that with a kiss or a band-aid.