Saturday 9 March 2019

Sharing Space

Week One of flash fiction course was focusing on memories. 
Week two- Setting, even if it's just implied or hinted.
Here's an exercise that came out of that.



Does she mind him being home all day?

He hasn’t deleted all of her from the den…yet.
Her stained glass mosaic of a woman holding the moon still leans against the window, daylight flooding moon and woman rapt in the figure of infinity,  her purple skirt caught in the throes of flamenco.

But her old books with their musky scent of wood and vanilla have been replaced by his swimming trophies, gilt faded, silver tarnished, oxidized, rotten to smell, sandpaper to touch. Liffey Swim Team Prize 3rd 1986. Seiko Men’s Open-Swimmer of the Year 1990. O’Brien’s Water polo Tournament-Most Valued Player 1978.

And the roll top of the desk beneath the trophied shelves no longer flutters and clicks, expanding and contracting like an accordion. He prefers it left open.

On the filing cabinet a stapler, a paper puncher and calculator have supplanted her tin box collection, Farrah’s Original Harrogate,Valroble Extra Virgin, that used to waft out the aroma of nougat and olives and travel.

And her postcards of El Cordobes, bicycles arched over the Herengracht, laundry strung from balconies on a Venetian canal, posted to herself from European mini-breaks, no longer bolster the filing cabinet’s gable wall- stripped back now to reveal scratched metal and adhesive strips, remnants of earlier takeovers.

Her walking shoes and dog paraphernalia are no longer stacked in the grate of the cast iron fireplace, flanked by art nouveau ceramic tiles. It is deemed obsolete, ecologically endangering and currently on auction on E-bay.

But the sky behind the mosaic woman-moon is cracked. The type of slit that could slice the top off unsuspecting flesh and it’s a question of how long… before he decides that a brazen woman is the last thing he needs in his retirement.

Does she mind him being home all day?


Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019

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