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Writer's pictureS.D. Richmond

Delighted: A practice in flash fiction

I joined the local writers club this morning and enjoyed studying flash fiction under Claire Guyton. Claire offered three rounds of free writing practice. For the first two, we were given prompts to inspire, and on the third round, we had the choice of revising one of our responses.




The prompt: The park bench was still damp from the previous night's rain. The mood: delighted.






Here's my take:


Delighted


What a night! My eyes survey a stranger at the bar. With her voluptuous body, rough curly dark hair, light brown eyes, and a laugh that approaches a cackle, she turns heads and draws unapproving glances. The air around her sizzles with promises of the first crisp day of fall as well as the


first warm breath of spring, and when she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear revealing gray tinsel, I am done for. We share a beer, and it’s the beer, we agree, that makes us both giddy.


Voice and whole body work together with fluidity as she develops a mixed media painting of woman grown from Spirit, hand-rolled cigarettes, a summer spent with the Grateful Dead, a childhood that demanded she be good, and from a life and a decade of giving to others. Next to her, I quiver and try to grow as big.


We spend the dark hours exploring all things sacred: the placement of the stars in the velvet heavens, the scars etched on canvases of skin, and a shared worship of a strong cup of coffee. I leave her townhome, a cocoon lit with Christmas lights, and I sigh. What a morning!

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