writeoneleaf:

Josie’s Declaration of Independence (cinema 1914) by New York Public Library on Flickr.

Look at the photo. Consider what has has just happened here, or what is about to happen here. Who has been here? Who will come here and and what will they do? What kinds of interactions can you imagine? Write one leaf about these or other things that occur to you upon looking at the picture. Do not allow yourself to be limited by what you see. Go.

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Josie was free. “I am free.” She said it to the empty house, the barren yard, to her lonely suitcase. She said to her locket that locked her husband’s photo still and in place. She said it to no one.
Josie sat down and settled her suitcase on her lap. Henry called it ‘a valise’. He did not know why he insisted it was a valise. Why he got so very furious when she asked if he packed his suitcase for the wedding, or if he happened to see the suitcases in attic or were they in crawlspace?
She packed for the trip, now her trip, in his valise. She announced to the hollow bedroom, “I am packing this suitcase!”
Now, she is waiting for their cab, but it is no longer their’s but her’s. She announced her freedom to the air. The air did not respond. How can it?
She sees no one around her. She has spoken to no one since the mourning officially ended. It ended - ends - according to the calendar.
Henry sits down next to her. Henry tries to brush away her tears, like he did when she chopped onions. He cannot. His hands pass through her face. They aren’t even his hands. They are something close to a memory of hands, gnarled and thick and with no weight or mass.
He cannot hold her hands or remove her fingernails from her palms. He cannot, but he has tried for days. He will not stop trying. Never