3WW #30

Welcome to Three Word Wednesday.

Each week, I will post three (or more) random words. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write something using all of those words. It can be a few lines, a story, a poem, anything. This is a writing exercise. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The idea is to let your mind wander and write what it will. I’ll also attempt to write something using the same three words.

Leave a comment if you participate.

This week’s words are:
Miles
Voice
Holding

Three Word Wednesday… Thursday… whatever :) So since I’m so very late, you get two entries this week. A haiku and a story.

I’ll never know how
The simple sound of her voice
Can reach across miles

Touch my broken soul
Melt the distance, until I’m
Holding her again

There is a distance
That can’t be counted. For it’s
Far too great and sad

May ours be measured
Only by miles and inches
Never by silence

——————————–

As Jim walked thru the large, open room, there were only a few people scattered around, in groups of two, three, or four. He got to the first door and checked the name on it: Ramsay. This was it.

Opening the door, Jim saw the crowd of people he expected. Near the front, he saw the widower sitting by the casket. The old man seemed to be in a daze, as those closest to the deceased often are. Occasionally he flashed a grateful smile as people passed by.

Jim joined the line of well-wishers filing past the casket. As the line moved slowly along, soon Jim could hear the man’s familiar voice. It was just as he remembered it. As if they had just spoken yesterday. But they hadn’t.

They had not spoken in eight years. Not since Jim abruptly left the business and moved out of state. When Clark had become too old to run the business by himself, he was forced to sell it. That had caused the rift between the two men. Jim’s emotions were a mixture of nerves and sadness. Could the fences be mended or would the coldness continue?

When he reached the front of the line, he extended his hand. In it, he was holding a family portrait. The old man saw the photo before he saw who was holding it. It was a picture of him, his wife, and their only child. He raised his gray-blue eyes to see Jim standing there.

The boy offered a handshake, and in a voice that sounded like someone else talking, said, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

Jim Ramsay had driven over four hundred miles that day. He could have driven for the rest of his life and never covered as much distance as he did in that moment.

“I find the map and draw a straight line, over rivers, farms, and state lines. The distance from A to where you’d be. It’s only finger-lengths that I see.”