Friday, February 23, 2007

Puzzling

He struggles with the puzzle. His hands can't find the pieces.

Already he knows it's not the answer he's looking for. The bits he's assembled show a picture of a man at a table. He's leaning over something: small brightly colored bits.

It's a man assembling a puzzle. It's him, assembling his puzzle.

This isn't the answer, he thinks. This isn't what I wanted.

A voice comes from behind him. "Try taking pieces away."

Away?

He tries it. One by one, he takes pieces from the puzzle and throws them back in the box.

Strangely, the picture never grows any less complete. But it changes.

If this is it, he says. If this is the answer. What was the question? I've forgotten the question.

In the presence of the Answer, all questions unask themselves. Nothing left but a box of puzzle pieces.

Look! They're all blank.

3 comments:

Bonnie Jacobs said...

May I save this a week? You must have been waiting for the prompt, which was only up a couple of minutes before I remembered I wanted to use the book-related one this week because of its proximity to publication date: six-word memoir. I'll put the "unneeded puzzle piece" back up next weekend, okay?

paisley said...

that was excellent tiel.. i truly believe it is one of my favorites....

Susan Helene Gottfried said...

Whoa. That's something else, Tiel. Very cool.