The People Below Her
Once deemed the brightest beacon of talent in three generations, all that continues to shine for Marilyn O'Brian Sibley Burns vanWieren are the diamonds on her fingers and the Times Square lights below her eighth-floor hovel.
Daily, she passes hours performing for her audience: pedestrians pondering meetings and meals, unaware of her existence, then and still. Weekly, a daughter she doesn't recognize comes to clean and take out the trash, brimming with bottles, never abandoning the woman who once abandoned her. Nightly, John Barrymore tucks Marilyn in, and, while sipping a tumbler of scotch, recites the soliloquies of Hamlet.
- Category: General / Misc
5 comments add one below
-
Melanie over 8 years ago
Thank you Drew. I am smiling big time. I worried about this one. I had to take it down from an original 168 words. Yikes!
-
Melanie over 8 years ago
Thank you Francis. I really appreciate that.
-
Julie over 8 years ago
Super drabble, Melanie. And kudos to you for managing to trim 68 words off the original. I know how hard it is to cut out a huge chunk of a drabble while trying to keep the story intact.
-
Melanie over 8 years ago
Thanks Drew! Not that's an awesome nickname, and quite a compliment.
Thank you Julie. I know what's missing, and it was hard to kill those babies! I'm glad to know the story stayed intact.
-
Melanie over 8 years ago
*now that's...not Not that's...
