Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
Prompts Exercise
Once upon a time there was an opportunity.
It was hard to see it coming but when it arrived it was impossible to ignore. She watched others circumnavigate it. Pointing or reaching to touch it tentatively.
A hearty laugh stopped short of bubbling out of her. She was holding back.
Every day she had anticipated this moment and, so, was ready. Calm and watchful, excited, but without the anxiety others seemed to have. The room rippled. She watched as one man taunted the opportunity daring it to strike out, before ducking behind lace curtains like some grotesquely obvious party trick. The others tittered.
One day, some time ago, she had seen people react this way in even lesser circumstances. Awed by looking outside – a window of opportunity. That day she had remained silent, demure. She nodded and oohed when prompted but felt little. That wasn’t true, she felt contemplative- imagining what it would be like when the opportunity arrived, when it was brought inside. Would it knock?
Because of that, her previous silence, her feigned awe – the room fell still when she strode with purpose across the room and looked this opportunity in the eye. They both stood still. There was a moment of doubt but it didn’t last. She looked at opportunity face on, she could feel it’s warmth.
And, because of that, she reached out and petted it. A soft, warm pulse of pleasure. The room gasped but took no steps to move, to intervene.
Until finally it was clear to everyone that this was in fact her opportunity. She had won it, coaxing it onto her lap. Enjoying its warmth, it’s promise to grow into something formidable, fierce and proud. While it was hers, it was also theirs, she acknowledged. It was their missed opportunity.
Exercise one
A private softening in a public space ….
I watch his solid silence, his unyielding self – hard with stubble, caked with plaster scum – unsmiling. Macho. I do not know him, his wife, his child, their lives. Eating zaatar in a cafe in Coburg. Tired, ordinary. His two year old girl child reaches across – clutching for his food ignoring her own.
With her movement he comes back to this world – our shared world- differently. Alive, he smiles at her, at inside her. He changes to another self, laughing at her need of him and reaches across the table. He picks her up. Both are gleeful. Her diamanted shoes kick over a salt shaker. He feeds her gently – his pastry, the very same pastry she didn’t want from her plate. He is better for holding her – she is better for being held- feeding.
But I wonder how long they will see each other so clearly, so purely. I wonder how long he will remain vulnerable to her and his clear need to be needed.
Exercise two
Stopping. Stopping short. Topping snort. Naught topping. Aught to be napping.
Why. Why not. Whine. Whinge. Whine. I’ll drink to that!
Sigh. Inward breath. Sign-in ward – clinical.
Back to stopping.
Stretching. Stretching the truth. The truth of stretching the truth – is stopping, stopping short.