Exercise 1: The Reluctant I

She won't even give him the time of day, but she still loves him. They're coworkers--we're all coworkers--and though they work in the same ward and it's one where they get tight-knit fast, she's terse. She's cold. It's clear from this angle that she never looks at him; the blonde arch of her head is steady, pointing directly forward. The bun at the base of her neck never wobbles, never drifts to the right--that's the direction she'd have to turn to look at him. It isn't as if he's the main attraction of that direction. There's the window, and the break room, and the toilets. Looking at him... For her, it would only take a moment--a flick of her eyes upwards and to the right, blue irises hidden behind lashes made smoky with mascara. His eyes, the brown of fresh-turned earth, would meet hers. There'd be a jolt in their stomachs, and they'd know. And they would know. Everyone around the office agrees, they're meant to be together. He glances at her all the time, searching for a break in the wall, a chink in the armor. It's all on her, this disconnect. She doesn't want to let herself hope that one day he's going to look back at her, so she erects that wall, she doesn't even let him have that one moment of realization, the moment where they both know what's going to happen. We around the office call it the Cold War, but it's not even as pure as that. For him, we wish it was.

Her name's Rose. Rosalie, actually, Rosalie--it's a name for tragic princesses, people who can't help their fate. She can, though. That's why it's confusing, because she is choosing it herself. If you look you can see that she'd be his perfect match. He could help open up her mind and she'd teach him to be a little more jaded. He trusts everyone he meets and that's just not good for him. Someday somebody's gonna take advantage. But--she needs the balance. Isn't it obvious? She won't even look at him. She loves him, but she won't even look at him.

If someone could tell her, she'd know she was being young and stupid. She doesn't know, she can't know, how fast love can leave. Not even deliberately. Sometimes it's an accident, a swift turn along a wet road in a mountain with a tree in the way. A lab explosion when you're young. Sometimes it's on purpose, and that's better. Then they'll be happy and you can be happy even with that--with the knowing that somewhere there's someone made for them, even if they were the someone made for you. It's worse when you drift apart, slowly--when you slowly lose your grip on someone you love. You don't even remember doing it, but the messages you leave on their phone become shorter and shorter, and you know that love is dying and you can't pull it back.

There's a beauty in that. Sometimes things fade slowly. Sometimes things don't have the half-life of uranium, going on and on and on for hundreds or even thousands of years. Sometimes people are like cherry blossoms, there for three glorious weeks--or eight glorious years--and then they're gone and all you have are photographs--or children--or not even that, but just a cell phone resting on a bedside table near a dusty blue coverlet in a room where motes of light dance from the holes between the slats in the blinds.

We see Rosalie refuse to look at him. She loves him and she won't look at him. Her eyes are icepicks directed at that computer screen, organizing charts. She's filling out spaces so the chief won't come around and complain, filling her mind with data and words, words, words, but never emotion, never the feelings. And he looks at her with eyes so full of love it hurts, and I leave messages that will never be heard on answering machines that will never be updated for a child who never loved, and therefore never got to live.

She loves him, but she won't even acknowledge it, won't let their hands brush for even a moment. She ignores him when he speaks to her, insults him when she deigns to see that he's there, she pretends to forget his name, his age, his existence... and I text a child whose name most people never knew, who these coworkers don't know existed, but was so beautiful it's no shame to love her.

Challenge: Write a 600 word, first person story in which you use a first-person pronoun (I, me, my) only two times.

What do you think? Success? Failure? Let me know in the comments.