A ROAD of HER OWN a S' a Written Creative Work
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A ROAD OF HER OWN A s’ A Written Creative Work submitted to the faculty of 5 4 San Francisco State University 'ZOm in partial fulfillment of £ N 0*7 C V the requirements for the Degree V. ( Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing by Kimberly Marie Gomes San Francisco, California January 2019 Copyright by Kimberly Marie Gomes 2019 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read “A Road of Her Own” by Kimberly Marie Gomes, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. I l/fa/ May-lee Chai. MFA Assistant Professor, Creative Writing Michelle Carter, MFA Professor, Creative Writing A ROAD OF HER OWN Kimberly Marie Gomes San Francisco, California 2019 A Road of Her Own trails Mira, a twenty-nine year-old obituary writer and aspiring photographer, who is stuck in a dead-end job but afraid to move on due to fears of artistic inadequacy, crippling debt, and leaving her ill mother behind. After growing up with her mother in their Westfalia van, Sunshine, Mira is afraid to give up the little security she has managed to accrue for herself - a steady but boring job and a small basement apartment in the most expensive city in the United States. Traveling and photographing may be the dream, but her passions feel selfish until she too is confronted with her own mortality and embarks on a road trip to Banff, Canada, where adventure and inspirational women help her redefine what it means to be alive. I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work. Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For centuries novels have featured men embarking on adventures for the sake of adventure. Yet even in 2018, it’s rare to find a traveling female protagonist going on a journey for herself without running from or to a relationship. “A Road of Her Own” is my attempt to write the woman-led story I wanted to read. Thank you to May-lee Chai for your steady support and thoughtful perspective and Toni Mirosevich for teaching me how to dive into the spaces that helped generate this book. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2 ......................................................................................................................................20 Chapter 3 ......................................................................................................................................30 Chapter 4 ......................................................................................................................................41 Chapter 5 ......................................................................................................................................48 Chapter 6 ......................................................................................................................................58 Chapter 7 ......................................................................................................................................78 Chapter 8 ......................................................................................................................................86 Chapter 9 ......................................................................................................................................96 Chapter 1 0 ..................................................................................................................................101 Chapter 1 1 ..................................................................................................................................107 Chapter 1 2 ..................................................................................................................................111 Chapter 1 3 ..................................................................................................................................123 Chapter 1 4 ..................................................................................................................................134 Chapter 1 5 ..................................................................................................................................140 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 6 ..................................................................................................................................149 Chapter 1 7 ..................................................................................................................................156 Chapter 1 8 ..................................................................................................................................169 Chapter 1 9 ..................................................................................................................................175 Chapter 2 0 ..................................................................................................................................197 Chapter 2 1 ..................................................................................................................................200 Chapter 2 2 ................................................................................................................................. 211 Chapter 23 ................................................................................................................................. 220 Chapter 2 4 ................................................................................................................................. 225 Chapter 25 ................................................................................................................................. 241 Chapter 2 6 ................................................................................................................................. 246 Chapter 27 ................................................................................................................................. 250 Chapter 2 8 ................................................................................................................................. 260 Chapter 2 9 ................................................................................................................................. 269 Chapter 3 0 ................................................................................................................................. 278 Chapter 3 1 ................................................................................................................................. 282 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 293 300 303 311 317 326 331 335 346 357 362 vii 1 Chapter 1 Have you looked down Montgomery Street at 8:45 in the morning and felt like the world was swallowing you whole? Mira stands there, in the thick of the human river. Horns honk. Cars clog intersections off Market Street. Muni buses rush by inches from the curb. It’s Tuesday and San Francisco suits silently scurry to places of equal importance, rushing to sit, absorb, be absorbed by to-dos left undone from yesterday. She can already feel the cloud of short breaths when she steps off Muni. She sees it as the stream of bodies overflow at the foot of the escalator, an expanding puddle struggling to contain itself. Person after person inches up to the stairs, taking up every inch of free space. The only place to look is down, so down she looks. She steadies the DSLR camera in her palms. Careful not to disturb the crowd, she pulls her camera up from her neck and snaps a photo - a motion she’s practiced week after week. She snaps another of the glittering, yellow landing strip at her feet and imagines ants toting the same line as the humans around her. The cement sparkle continues out of the station and onto the sidewalk. The concrete comes alive as little specks of glass of dance in the morning glimmer. She wonders why they put sparkles in the cement - if it’s an accident or a choice to lighten the thing everyone ends up staring at. 2 As she rises from subway to street level, she notices the darkness - the Financial District shadow. The kind that goes unnoticed once the eye adjusts to the lack of light. Skin chills with goosebumps. Sun disappears behind blocks of glass buildings. Mira looks up only to find the slim rectangle of sky bookended by bank towers. She looks behind her. A man with a briefcase stumbles into her, ramming her shoulder before weaving and muttering under his breath. Looking back up at the stream of bobbing heads, she wonders how many people have looked down the street and felt like their life had merged into someone else’s. If anyone else ever sees that one suited person weaving around crowds, bumping shoulders with an old woman, ignoring the comer musician, one, two, three too many times. If they find themselves catching their breath in the elevator, whispering, “remember when you said this wouldn’t be you?” It’s this kind of pondering that makes Mira intentionally slow when she realizes she’s fallen into autopilot out of fear of being trampled. It’s moments like these when she slips into the surrounding rhythm, that she worries one day she’ll find herself running across the street for no reason other than she’s grown accustomed to hurrying. She’ll keep her headphones in when the guitarist begins his curbside solo, forgetting how her chest once lightened with each plucked string. She worries one