by Sandra Gillhouse

Created on: April 16, 2011   Last Updated: April 23, 2011

     Luvy Stillwater stared doll-eyed out her kitchen window into the brown-gray morning. Something about the old cloth butterfly hanging there, torn and flapping one dead wing against its metal stand, hypnotized her.

     “Now there is the metaphor for my life,” Luvy said to no one before she gulped a large glass of water she had been holding. The faucet’s drip… drip… drip… added a little timbre to her mood.

     The coffee pot beeped so she dumped the water and filled her favorite blue mug with steaming black brew and then stirred in a half a pack of sweetener, but no cream. She had forgotten to buy it at the market. It was early, but as usual she had her whole day already planned, focused writing for the morning and more chapters to revise on her new novel after lunch. She had the house to herself since Fred, her hubby, took the kids to his ex-wife’s for the weekend.

     He said he was going to do some “smoozing,” in the Hamptons while he was up there. “Some kind of real estate deal, nothing you would be interested in.”

      It always annoyed Luvy when he assumed she wasn’t interested in his work. He had an overnight bag with him that he held up as he said, “I’ll probably just stay up there at the hotel for the rest of the weekend, let you get some work done, and bring Micah and Leah home on Sunday. How’s that sound?”

     Luvy hated it, but she said, “Sure that would be great. I am really close to finishing this novel so—. Before she could finish he gave her a peck on her cheek, and they were gone.

     Truthfully, she was nowhere near finishing anything. Like Sisyphus, I’m merely rolling a damn stone up the hill only to have it roll back down again day in and day out. She thought as she padded her way back to her office where a short stack of upside down pages lay on her desk, a stark contrast to the taller still-needed-work-face-up stack; the novel. Luvy shoved it all over to make room for her mug. Sitting at her desk, she first adjusts her chair. It falls all the way to the floor and then she tugs it past the desktop before she finally gets the height right and the backrest semi-comfortable.

   “Mental note to self, get a new ergo dynamic chair,” she said to the air, then

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