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Fumbling in the darkness you believe you can read the lovers’ braille of gooseflesh on my arms. Except you stutter like a toddler, stuck sucking simple words found in my nipples; repetitively mouthing without nuance or inflection, nor grasping the meaning of what you read. I hold the shaft of the pen you want to write our history with, squeeze the ink dry. You’ll read my note on the table in the morning.
Posted in Ars Poetica, Creativity, Short Stories
Tagged art, creativity, experimental, fiction, flash fiction, Friday flash, handwritten pages, micro-fiction, microfiction, short story, writing
He grasped the early morning shafts of sunlight striking through the gaps in the curtains. Strips of sunbeams speckled with diamonds of dust. Harvested like shards of honeycomb, stored in jars and placed around the house as lanterns. He spooned mouthfuls of amber twilight from the jars and ate the light to satiate the darkness.
Under the shelter of the summer storms clouds he waited, held within a womb of humidity, his body slick with sweat.
As he drew breaths, held deeply then exhaled slowly, the skies rippled and pulsed, heaved and held back their waves before splitting above him in a gushing of waters.
The tackiness of his sweat sloughed off like old skin beneath the baptism of new rain.
A midwife to his own rebirth.
Renewed skin, perfect in its newest gloss, dressed in the lifetime of variables: family, work, love, pain, futility, faith, doubt, hope and sex, until worn threadbare, stained and tattered.
And he would wait for the next storm, for another baptism, another cleansing, seed to impregnate the soil with his vision of himself.
* with acknowledgement to Bruce Dawe and Shakespeare
Posted in Creativity, Short Stories
Tagged creativity, experimental, fiction, fiction friday, flash fiction, Friday flash, handwritten pages, micro-fiction, microfiction, writing
Their kiss was a reintroduction to joy; the passionate self-belief everything would be ok in a screwed up world when the screwed-uppedness manifested in a constant shit-storm that threatened to drown them and salt the earth in the aftermath.
To get there, invitations slipped in as ordinary moments as the antithesis to pain’s physical form: meals in Tupperware containers reheated in microwaves and eaten with grief and gratitude; cups of tea with phones ignored and flowers as prayers for healing.
And in the end, the scraping away and the shovelling of shit to make manure for a broken soil leading to the kiss of forgiveness and the parched desert of intimacy soaked with rain awaiting the bloom of wild flowers.
Standing inside the phone booth, its panes of glass crumbled to hail stones on the concrete floor, with the receiver cradled against my ear, I pretend to put coins in the slot while listening to the dial tone. The static drone a soundtrack to the anonymity of pain. Stabbing the numbers in a sequence I have never forgotten, hoping to call the ghosts of the future to tell them not to wait up for me.
Posted in Creativity, Short Stories
Tagged creativity, experimental, flash fiction, handwritten pages, micro-fiction, microfiction, slice of life, writing
Autumn of Cheeseburgers
I walk through the autumn of cheeseburger wrappers drifting on the updraft of car exhaust with only enough change in my pocket to buy you and me an ice cream cone.
Threads
You see because
you look at
the hand of God
in the threads
This piece is for sale $15AUS (inc postage to anywhere in the world). For an extra $2AUS you can get a set of zentangle postcards.
If you wish to purchase this piece, leave a message in the comments and I will get in touch with you via the email address you use when posting a comment.
Calico tote bags featuring “Coloured Pencils” and “Stupid Question” and postcards are available for sale HERE.
UPDATE: This piece is now SOLD.
Posted in Short Stories
Patched Together Plasticine
maybe
the difference between us,
this
patched together earth and water,
living plasticine
is
we can see each other’s
dreams
This piece is for sale $15AUS (inc postage to anywhere in the world). For an extra $2AUS you can get a set of zentangle postcards. It is signed and dated, and the text handwritten on the reverse side.
If you wish to purchase this piece, leave a message in the comments and I will get in touch with you via the email address you use when posting a comment.
You can also buy calico tote bags featuring Coloured Pencils (zentangle) or Stupid Question (blackout poem) or other sets of postcards HERE.
Posted in Short Stories
Prefer
you prefer
a human life
a choice
to look
one single time
to experience
what it may be
to be created
Posted in Short Stories
She ties the dressing gown around her waist. Lines up her toes where the metal coping separates the hallway carpet from the bathroom tiles. A diver’s stance. Anticipation of the tiles’ coldness.
She steps. Plummets. Side steps the bath mat. Plants her feet squarely. Small ripples quickly subside. The cold tiles prickle the soles of her feet until it stings. Tapers off to an equilibrium.
Repeatedly she will lie on her back on the bathroom floor undressed. Lets the cold of the tiles fight with the heat of her body. She relents. Acquiesces. Adds a layer of permafrost to her heart against the fire of her mother’s tongue.
Posted in Creativity, Short Stories
Tagged creativity, experimental, fiction, fiction friday, flash fiction, Friday flash, handwritten pages, micro-fiction, microfiction, writers, writing
I am an English teacher and drummer/percussionist with an interest in literary pursuits, creative endeavours, rhythmic permutations, theological amplifications and comedic outbursts.
Here you will find my creative detritus: articles on living a creative life and writing explorations.
And other ideas I have snaffled from the papers stuck on the fridge door.
Twitter: @RevHappiness
Instagram: @handwrittenpages
My collaborative epistolary novel, "Post Marked: Piper's Reach," written with Jodi Cleghorn (@JodiCleghorn) out now via Vine Leaves Press.
Come and browse through the library; there is no need to be silent.
A Fullness in Brevity - Adam Byatt 