I'm not competing for the challenge that this prompt comes from. The deadline is over, anyway. It's Another Artist's "A Little is a Lot" challenge. I just liked the prompts, and felt I would do this for my own personal pleasure and memory.
Prompt: "Sharpies and sticky-notes made up their last memories."
Simple one-liners. Quite insignificant, mostly. To an outsider, no one would have been able to read the love between the lines. But certain people would have been able to read the care and love in the purple cursive, black script, and, a later addition, the green-and-blue conjoined writing of a small child. Certain words would rise above the others, pressed harder with ink, as though to place more emphasis.
Don't forget.
Be careful.
I'll be home very soon.
Always.
They are locked up now, in a dusty old music box that still occasionally tinkles with The Dance of the Sugarplums. A very old antique, covered with grit and dust. Passed down mother to daughter, parent to child. Lined with dirt and occasional auburn hairs, neon colored sticky notes still join together when jostled. Strings of word after word, laced with love.
Faded memories of laughter that she cannot place, words she cannot discern, hugs she can barely feel. They come back, with the smell of cedar and the preserved, watery smell of Sharpies.
Such a cruel way to remember two of the most important people in her life.
Many times she has opened the box, just a crack, so as not to hear the song played again. Too many painful memories flood when she hears the tinkling, crackling tune. Instead, she opens it a hairline crack and draws out the notes one by one, tracing the pencil and paper, ballpoint pens and Sharpie markers. She tries so hard to remember when she got them, where she found them, what they came with. What her beautiful mother, sweet grandmother, gave her.
Grace. Hope.
Loved.
That was the place where she felt loved.
Her name did not live up to her life.
Purple and black slowly faded away, leeching out of the notes. Out of the family. Slowly dieing out of life.
The scent of Sharpies and the blended, watered color of sticky-notes make up her last memories of the other two.
Three generations, falling through the papers, linked by loving words and memories that will never leave her. Thoughts that will haunt her until the end of time.
The ghosts of a past, where family still lingered in every corner of the air.
I love you.
Now. For the explanation.
The purple cursive: Hope Cahill.
Black script: Grace Cahill.
Blue-and-green conjoined: Amy Cahill (as a child, when Grace and Hope were also still alive).
The name "Amy" means "loved." That should clear up one of the paragraphs up there.
This is Amy's point of view. The last line is another sticky note.
Questions? PM or review.
Word Count: 425 Words