Deleting the Draft

This is not the first draft. I deleted three other lines that used to be where this one is now. Ghosts fighting to confuse you as you read. What did they say, you wonder. Mediocre, perhaps? Well, they must have been or so I wouldn’t have erased them. They could have grown on me with time. Or maybe I was too rash—not realizing their splendor in their simplicity.
What thoughts did Kafka burn for fear of God not loving him? How many trash cans did Hamsun fill? How many nights unfruitful did Dostoevsky sit aside a window as he gained his breath from tossing up the room and ripping his work to shreds?
What of that amateur writer that turned left on a sullen street? His favorite color green. A bus with a banner of the same color distracted him. He almost turned right and would have met a young red-head to enrapture him and inspire him, thus indirectly, giving birth to one of the greatest writers of all time. He died of old age and a smile on his face: Grand-kids surrounding him the latter part of his life. Their arms in the air, screaming, singing, chanting,” Grandpa, Grandpa.” He would lose himself at breakfast sipping coffee and his wife would ask what the matter was. He would lie and say he was only daydreaming. He felt something was missing. But what? He would walk past book stores and have a sudden uncomfortable feeling he couldn’t describe. Where had the years gone, he wondered? Had he lived truly? Had he left a shifting stone unturned?
As he gazed upon his grey smoking eyes in the mirror, another person ( an elderly woman of sixty-three years of age ) was looking into her own eyes pondering the same dilemma. All the men loved her. Loved. She kept her long hair. It was no longer red. She undressed and stared at her naked body. All the parts were there except now time had taken toll. She had had many lovers; they all wanted to keep her—marry her. She never deceived an admirer; she was always free, honest and unattainable. Something was waiting for her out there, she thought—in the future perhaps. Or someone.
Now it was too late. For the both of them. For the mailman outside your window. For the carpenter hammering away in the distance. The housewife in a new shade of summer dress. The professional golfer in slacks no longer slender. The mechanic. The prostitute. The transvestite. The child molester. The priest. The eunuch. The ballerina. You.

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