"The Choice": A short story for the gov't shut-down

Dear readers,
     I am dusting off this blog after many months of neglect to share with you a short story I'm working on that was inspired by last year's threat of government shut-down. This is not a final version, but because it seems so timely I don't want to wait until I have time to revise it before sharing it.
     This is a story about choices. About false dichotomies. About the ever-increasing gap between our nation's leaders and its citizens.
     I welcome your thoughts and comments about the story itself or about ways in which we might move forward as a country.
Warmest regards,
S. H. Aeschliman

The Choice
by S. H. Aeschliman

“An increasing percentage of Americans are becoming alarmed at the aggressive posture taken by the members of government toward the very people who not only elected them into their respective positions, but also grant the members of government the required privileges to carry out their constitutional duties.”
—Orion M. Martin in a letter to the editor of newsreview.com

The room was not large. Maybe six by eight feet, no more. The fluorescent lighting made the white linoleum floor gleam and turned her skin a sickly gray-green. The walls were cement blocks painted gray. And there were two doors.

Both doors were set in the same wall, and they were identical: polished wood with a brass handle. They looked like the front doors to suburban houses, not the kind of doors you’d find in a cement-block room with linoleum flooring.
 
Though Sara could not remember how she’d come to be here, she was sure she had not entered through either of those doors. One moment she’d been lying in bed under her down comforter, thinking she should get up, gray winter light coming in through the window…the next moment she was sitting on a metal chair in her pajamas, facing two doors.

Grief, suffering & sacrifice

Years ago, a friend of mine said to me, "You have a deep well of grief hidden inside you." At the time I didn't believe him.

But evidently I didn't dig the well deep enough. Or maybe didn't hide it well enough. A couple of years ago it overflowed or came uncapped or was stumbled upon. Whatever it is deep wells of grief--hidden in such a way that the person housing them doesn't even know they're there--do.

We are supposed to be in control of ourselves and our emotions, but I am not in control of mine.

I cry. Like, a lot. "I could write a whole book on crying," I wrote in one of my pieces, and it's true. This essay might be the beginning of it.

Malcontente

Today the dogs weigh me down.
I think how nice it would be
to walk alone
without competing agendas.

We walk for a full block in harmony.
Then one stops, digs in her heels to sniff the grass
the other keeps walking
I pulled taut between them.

Three creatures vying for control.
I win only
because I'm biggest and strongest.

Today the fact that the dog walker
tied a series of knots in my dog's leash
two years ago
is a fresh source of annoyance.
And the dirt or
possibly dried shit
at the foot of my white comforter.
And the pile of unwashed dishes 
waiting in the sink,
and counter tops unclean with
crumbs and spills.
Just the thought of them
exhausts me.

Yesterday it was the neighbor
who brings his Rhodesian Ridgebacks
unleashed to my front yard
as though it were a city park
to do their doody.

The day before it was 
a lover's waning interest.

I feel the muscles 
knotting between my shoulder blades. 

We walk past a garden box with
unplucked cabbage
now of gargantuan proportions.
If all the people disappeared
would the cabbage spread out and run rampant? 
Would it shelter 'neath the rhododendrons
or overpower them?

This waning moon
is taking its toll.