Curiouser and Curiouser

B-3 Alice's Right Foot

Unable to find her feet, Alice decides to send presents to them. Write a short story (<1000 words) or poem (<40 lines) about missing a body limb and your attempts to find it. Letter writing optional.

This morning,
I woke and couldn't find
my imagination, not under
the bed nor in the
laundry bin
nor tucked between the blankets
(I tossed through all seventeen)
nor inside the books
on all six shelves.

And so I wrote an ad,
“Missing: One Imagination.
Brown, curly hair, blue eyes.
Five foot six and a half inches tall.
Answers to the names “Alice,”
“Charley,” and “George” depending
on the time of the moon and my mood.
If found, please return.”

And I posted it on every telephone poll
in a sixteen block radius,
with a hand drawn image (because
I couldn't get my phone to
download without her),
and waited.

And when I'd waited two hours
and forty-six minutes and
seventeen very long seconds,
doodling, I found her, smashed
between my pen
and my paper
and a new poem.

And I kissed her, and bandaged
her skinned knee, and made her
promise to take me with her,
tomorrow.

line count: 34