R Loses Her Key & Truth? by Joann Evan
R Loses Her Key
R wakes up on a blue pillow crusted with hairspray. Her mouth tastes like an old shoe left out in the rain. She throws on some old clothes and sets out on her Saturday errand to the drugstore to pick up her prescription. R digs through her Hello Kitty tote bag for her car key and discovers it is gone. She sits on the porch steps and weeps silent tears of frustration through her bloodshot eyes when her next-door neighbor sees her.
“Hey, R! You alright?”
“No,” R begins to sob. “I don’t know where I put my car key.”
“OK, hope you feel better,” he chirps as he gets into his spacious late model Lincoln and drives away.
R sits on the stoop waiting for divine inspiration, or maybe a talking squirrel to help her locate her misplaced key. She goes back inside her dismal apartment, the walls covered with brown fake-wood paneling left over from the 1970s, well before R was born. It makes her feel locked in a museum of sorts.
She paces around for a while, looks for something to eat but decides she’s not hungry. R stares at her empty pill bottle and finally gives up on the prospect of help from a neighbor or a talking animal. She decides to set out on the two-mile walk to the drugstore. Her green Ford Escort remains in the driveway taunting her with its locked doors and silent ignition.
R gets to the drugstore and is welcomed reluctantly by the whining automatic door, fluorescent lights hitting her hard through her pupils. She waits in line for her prescription.
“Next,” the pharmacy tech calls. R stands there, still puzzling over her missing key, feeling lost.
“Next!” the pharmacy tech yells with resentful enthusiasm. R steps up to the counter.
“Name and date of birth.”
“R, February 7, 1989.”
Every week R picks up the same prescription and every week the same pharmacy tech asks for her name and date of birth.
“That will be twenty-five dollars with your insurance.” She reaches into her bag, pulls out a small pink wallet and pays in cash. She exits through the same squeaky automatic door and heads home.
She focuses her attention on the cracks in the sidewalk, still agonizing over the whereabouts of her car key, looking up only to cross the street. Once home, she puts her pill bottle in the medicine cabinet. R plunges her hand into Hello Kitty’s gaping head to retrieve her receipt and touches metal.
Truth?
I saw a monster
That’s what he called himself
He may have been
But who would think he’d be
So bold as to say he was
If he really was?
I saw a victim
That’s what she called herself
She may have been
But who would think she’d be
So bold as to say she was
If she really was?
I heard the truth
Spoken much too loud
It may have been
But who would need to speak
So loud just to say it was
If it really was?
“When I wrote "R Loses Her Key," I was primarily focused on songwriting and poetry and had not written prose in a long time. I struggled to come up with a name for my character, let alone something interesting for her to do. Thus, R was born and she stars in a story about losing her car key. This plot is not particularly engaging, but the R character has developed and subsequently gone on to do more interesting things. This is the seminal R story.
Truth? is a poem I wrote while thinking about my blowhard boyfriend (whom I care for very much). Sometimes subtlety is a virtue. I whispered that to him once but it fell on deaf ears. I don't like this poem because it's not particularly original or colorful, despite its symmetry.”
Joann Evan (she/her) is a (struggling) writer from Northeastern Pennsylvania, USA. She has been writing since she picked up a pencil at the age of six and has been published in Pennsylvania Bards Eastern PA Poetry Review, Poets Live Fifth Anthology, and forthcoming in Blue Villa.