Writing Prompt: Write About A Bed

You want to say that it was large. A beautiful boat of a bed, styled after Marie Antoinette, all swirls and iron flourishes. But it wasn't. It was a divan. The worst kind of divan, all spiky springs and quilted satin headboard.

It was small. Unusually small. Perhaps one of those one and a half beds, for women who replaced the man long gone with the hot little body of the daughter he left behind, or a pillow turned length-ways to stop the goose pimples of his absence fluttering once again over her flesh. It was small and perfumed by something ugly. Something you couldn't bring yourself to think about.

You weren't unhappy. But you were cold. Your body scrunched into a ball, hands tucked into the warmth between your legs. The sheets a mere nylon nod to comfort. The boucle mustard bedspread spread across the lino floor like a picnic blanket laid down for a feast.

There were three pillows. His pressed over his face when he slept and yours clutched between your breasts, the other flat beneath your head as you lay there breathing ice into the air and reading the words scrawled all over the toile paper on the walls. Your red lipsticked vitriol an insult to what once must have brought decoration to a room otherwise devoid of anything resembling style.

He laughed in his sleep. A muffled grin spoken out loud.

Writing Prompt: My Home Makes Me Think Of...

Home. Safety. Security. Work. Yes, I think mostly work. There are no longer any boundaries between where I live and what I write. Everything is fair game. From the gluten free cakes I bake for my son, to the tussle on the sofa with the man I have only just met. All of it, goose for the gander.

When does it begin, this urge to translate every action, every moment into words? When is it that we first learned to stand outside ourselves? To seek comfort, pain... ecstasy only to satisfy our inner muse?

Work. That is what I think of when I think of home. Down on my knees wiping inexplicable dirt off the skirting boards. Folding and re-folding. Head buried in the scent of all our yesterdays. Work. Home. Home. Work. A child always tied around my neck. Swiping the dust off plaster memories in order to stay alive.

Always this: always drafting words and paragraphs in your minds eye. Always shaping our lives in order to amuse. All true feeling swept under the rug.

And then comfort. Most of all, comfort, because words are what we are made of. The only thing that sustains us. Quotes from our own lives, wrapped like black bands around our heart.

Scrub. Clean. Dust. Live.

Writing Prompt: I Believe...

I believe our only obligation is to be kind. We do not owe anyone anything else. The world is too much with us now. That is my mantra for today. Sometimes there needs to be a place to retreat to. A place in which to hold our own hand and say enough now, Sweetheart. Enough.

It is possible I have lost my way. It is possible I set too much store by kindness and feel the seams of my heart come a little undone in the face of the tiniest disregard. I used to pick at the flock wallpaper in her house. Olive green swirls of loveliness coming away in my hands. I wasn't kind then. (I am not kind now). Those who are jealous are intrinsically ugly.

Now I am hungry. If you were were here I would simmer mushrooms gently in a scrape of butter and serve them on a gilt edged plate. If you were here I would dance with you. That is what I would do. I would say yes, lets dance. To an Elvis Presley love song. My face pressed against the goodbye kiss still staining your cheek.

I think I might be lonely. You haven't been kind. No-one could ever say you have been kind.