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Small feet in roman sandals
1.
Your voice plucks at invisible strings attached to my arms, delicately placing them around a figure only I can see.
2.
With the ghost of a potato grasping my left hand and that of a hedgehog swinging my right, I run out of the house into the hole in the hedge. I nestle in its scratchy interior, rocking to a jaunty tune, until your next song reaches me. A raincloud of anguish which forces me out of my reveries.
3.
I have nowhere to run.
4.
I fidget in the wooden chair.
5.
Focusing my full attention on your small feet I wonder why on a wintery night you are performing in roman sandals. Anything to distract myself from the hurt darkening the sublime purity of your voice.
6.
I am too scared of falling through your pain into my own.
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| Wow...unique! I like it for being different...in a good way! |
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Hmm I feel as if I’ve fallen into some sort of weird swirling vortex here…or maybe something done with holding your writing up to a funhouse mirror..
Anyway---
Great last line.. a little clichéd, but it fits well.. I wouldn’t change it.
For some reason I think that the way this flash is formatted suits the pacing well..
I’m going to put this out there….
Writing flash is tough.. there are so many different “tastes” in this genre you can’t please all of the people all of the time. And the more stodgier literary people (even if they’re young) don’t put too much stock in flash because to them it’s not “writing.”
But I like flash.. and the farther from mainstream the better. I like your style.
“2.
With the ghost of a potato grasping my left hand and that of a hedgehog swinging my right, I run out of the house into the hole in the hedge. I nestle in its scratchy interior, rocking to a jaunty tune, until your next song reaches me. A raincloud of anguish which forces me out of my reveries.”
The only thing that ti would change in this is:
2.
With the ghost of a potato grasping my left hand and that of a hedgehog swinging my right, I run out of the house into the hole in the hedge, nestling into its scratchy interior. You rock me to a jaunty tune, until your next song reaches me, and a rain cloud of anguish which forces me out of my reveries.
And you might have better ideas… I thought I’d throw my opinions your way.
And please don’t take this suggestion the wrong way.. I think that your writing is brilliant and I enjoy it… |
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Hi Kirsty,
a descriptive piece with a little
mystery in it?
"Well, you made me think of the cup and then I wondered why I'd never thought to drink from it." I'd take that and amplify it, give a plot to the description. I'd find ways to give the tea cup significance, drama and romance. At present, there isn't very much that happens here.
It occurs to me that this may be a reflection of the traquility of tea ceremony; but I think if that's the intention, you need to show a bit of noise so that the reader can grasp the calm, if you see what I mean.
I get the feeling there's loss, dislocation and nostalgia here, hence the flawed tea ceremony as an attempt at reconnection.
I think flash fiction is like poetry in that every word should pull its weight.
Based on this, a few suggestions:
The repetition of light here seems clumsy, even if intentional: "It is very light. In the light the white gleams, although less so under my care which leaves everything a little dusty."
Here: "It is patterned only on one side. Inky blue coloured shadows of foliage contrasted with pink flowers ?? two pink flowers, and two golden flowers outlined in red." I'd suggest that 'contrasted' should be 'contrast'.
I'd cut this sentence: "Café Jiji ?? the height of English elegance, like the lost traveler that I am, away from the city, town, and village, down the line but down right civilized." There is a sense of dumping information here that, if it is integral to the story, should be woven in far more subtly.
In paragraph four, I'd drop the rhetorical "Why tonight?", mainly because it doesn't advance the story, and seems like something that enabled the sentence proceeding it to be written, and as such should be edited out, like the way you take away the scaffolding once you finish a building.
In the last paragraph, I'd change "swilling around" and make the image less offhand, because it's the clinching image of the piece.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Mark |
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