See What I’ve Become

By Peter Bowden


The workshop breathed. Wood curled in shavings at its feet, metal whispered from the walls, and the old lathe thrummed like a sleeping heart. He moved through it like a priest in his chapel, not with reverence, but with a familiarity that bordered on love. Every drawer, every notch in the bench, every scarred mallet told a story—not of victory, not of fame, but of showing up. Day after day. Year after year. Until the room knew his rhythm better than he did.

Outside, the world glared with blue screens and glass towers. Inside, the oil-stained rags still smelled of effort and time. He sanded the edge of a chair leg he had been shaping for weeks, watching the grain come alive under his hands. It was the kind of quiet miracle no one noticed anymore—a thing being made, slowly, honestly, without shortcuts. He liked that the wood did not care for noise. It only asked to be understood.

Night pressed against the windows, and the overhead bulb hummed into life. In the reflection, he saw the lines of his face, the grit in his eyes, the slight stoop in his shoulders. He looked nothing like the boy who once dreamed of cities, applause, headlines. No, this man was quieter, stronger, rooted. "See what I’ve become,” he said under his breath, and there was no regret, only the rough comfort of a life forged by his own hands.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Woman Who Folded Her Way to Glory

By Peter Bowden
Image
She folded t-shirts at first. Part-time, under fluorescent lights that flickered like indecisive lightning. The shirts were always the wrong size or the wrong color or folded the wrong way, but she smiled anyway. People asked her where the bathrooms were. Sometimes she told them. Sometimes she pointed vaguely, just for sport. It was the beginning of something, though no one—not even she—knew what. In time, she went full-time. Gave tours with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for puppies or preachers. Her voice could bounce off stone and charm a bored teenager. She wrote press releases that made people care about sidewalk chalk festivals and the grand opening of the third best coffee shop in town. She remembered birthdays. Brought cake. Brought joy. She once stapled her blouse to a budget report and didn't notice until after the staff meeting. It became legend. She was that kind of legend. And now—after 29 years, 10,713 days, 4 broken office chairs, 113 bad hair days, 7 crises...
Read more

She Was Always Sad

By Peter Bowden
Image
She was always sad, though most people never noticed. She laughed at the right times, nodded when spoken to, and never once caused a scene. But there was a heaviness behind her eyes, like clouds that never moved, just hovered quietly. At the coffee shop, she always took the seat by the window, looking out as if waiting for someone who never came. The truth was, she had once loved with the kind of fullness that makes you believe you’ll never be alone again. A hand in hers, a voice calling her name from across a quiet room, the warmth of another body curled beside her in the coldest months. And then one day, the world cracked open, and he was gone. Just like that. No storm. No explosion. Just silence where there had once been everything. So she carried that silence. Not with drama or despair, but with the quiet dignity of someone who had known something precious and lost it. Her sadness wasn’t bitterness—it was love, still alive, with nowhere to go. And so she let it live inside her, s...
Read more

Things Are Quiet

By Peter Bowden
Image
The house was quiet now. The mornings came and went like old friends who had grown tired of the visit. He would sit at the kitchen table with his hands around a coffee cup that had long gone cold, staring at the empty chair across from him. The ache was not loud, nor did it rage. It sat in his chest like a stone sunk to the riverbed, unmoved by the current of passing days. He thought about the way she would hum softly while drying the dishes, the sound slipping through the cracks of his memory like sunlight through a dusty window. He missed her without ceremony, without grand displays. It was a dull, persistent throb that never asked for attention but never left him alone. Sometimes he would walk the old path down to the river, where they once threw crumbs to the ducks and talked about small things that seemed bigger then. The air was thick with the scent of pine, and he could hear the water moving over the rocks, just as it always had. It made him angry sometimes—how the world did not...
Read more