11/19/24 Prompt: Write about something you’ve never done before. (15 minutes)
Grayson sat in the kitchen in his boxers and moth-worn undershirt with a fresh cup of coffee, alternately blowing gently across the steaming surface and slurping a tiny sip, risking searing the tiny point of flesh on his upper lip.
Per his morning ritual, he scraped the hardened specks from the inner corners of his eyes and sat up forward to address a pile of junk mail collected from the slot in the front door. How long had it been since he’d received anything of interest?
Nevertheless, he always opened each envelope thinking that someone somewhere out there had touched these papers, not thinking of him personally but leaving a part of themselves on the page, skin cells, oils from a fingerprint.
Occasionally, he would find a stray eyelash or hair, and he would put it in a cleaned-out jar of baby food that sat on the windowsill, and he would send his love and friendship to the new stranger who had come into his life.
How could he know what lay ahead for him, how his life would change from this day, never to be the same again? Third in the pile of mail was a letter, an acceptance letter for the Mission to Mars, volunteers only. He’d won the lottery.
