In my article last week, I mentioned sharing my work from NanoWrimo. Well, here it is, as promised. Man, did I have a lot of options for topics. But there's really only one right now, as most Americans know.

This piece, of course, is heavily influenced and inspired by emotions provoked by last week's election. It's a creative fiction work written to be completely inclusive. I wanted anyone of any gender identity, sexual orientation, or race with loved ones in the U.S. military, or any military for that matter, to be able to insert themselves into this piece and connect to the emotions it deals with.

A Secret Sprocket

A monstrous engine clanks on the horizon. Spewing guttural gurgles mixed with the screeching cries of the terrified. It's an ominous shadow fixed against the orange and umber haze of the dying evening.

They sit on any old wooden bench in any somewhat neglected park in any state, city, or town. They're anywhere, and they can see the lumbering machine from everywhere. There, they take a small cog out of the front of their worn blue jeans. It's about the size of quarter. They roll the cog around their hand, neither playing with it nor admiring it.

The cog must be made of bronze; it's not shiny and reflective like gold and silver and brass could be. It's a homely color, that of crushed fall leaves, but with a subtle metallic glimmer and a warm heat that has nothing to do with temperature. The cog had acquired a dirty wear about it, like that of an old penny, from how much it had been fiddled with.

It had become their rosary. A token to take out and twiddle while worries of their loved one piles up. They test and retest the grooves and depressions between the spokes of the sprocket and think about their life. Just a fingertip is all it takes. They think about how the depressions are a good visual representation of the time they spend alone, while their partner turns and turns.

It wasn't necessarily something they wanted for themselves. They'd turned it down even, multiple times, but at the same time, it was something they chose with their whole heart. They chose it because of the spokes. They gently caress the metal protrusions on the cog, thinking about the times in their life when their partner is there on the bench with them, and they smile, certain they'd made the right choice.

Then they look through the the unfeeling Plexiglas at the shadow-engine on the horizon, and they worry. They clench the cog tighter in their fist and cry out at the machine. They curse what the cog forces them to endure, but they sacrifice anyway. They shake their fist and scream at the sky. A desperate plea that their cog withstands the brutal engine it must obey. They send an instinctual, wordless prayer to anything so that their cog not join the endless umber and clementine trail of cracked and rusted cogs, fallen behind the corrosive man of war.

I write this for myself and on behalf of everyone with a loved one in the service. I hope you've enjoyed it.