Drabbles

Silver threads swirl round her.

Floating on unseen currents, they occasionally catch on a face, a smile, a laugh.

They snag on the moment when eyes meet, souls connect, and friends are made.

Usually the weaving happens gradually and then overtime the threads loosen again because friends part.

But thrice in a life time there’s a face, a smile, a laugh that are held on to forever.

The silver threads vibrate with conversations unheard by anyone else. A secret smile, a hidden look and love is found.

But how can she untangle the web, when she’s no longer the spider?

Dad watches his baby girl learn to roll, learn to push herself up, then learn to crawl.

Now she can find out what’s over there. That shape. That shadow. That thing.

Wriggling across the wooden floor, she reaches with her pudgy hand and grabs the squishy ball. Giggling with satisfaction, she tries to eat it.

Only a few years later, his little girl asks endlessly, “What does this do? How does that work? What if houses didn’t exist?”

Answering becomes more difficult, but dad keeps trying because he remembers how curiosity encouraged her to learn and the giggle it produced.

The red and white dragons circle the war-zone. White lines are drawn on the field of jade. Like firing a cannon, the egg-shaped ball is kicked into the air.

The opposition returns fire.

The ball is caught and carried forward. Defenders race into formation. They tackle hand-to-hand.

But one player breaks through, like the Calvary. Leaving a trail of fallen bodies, he’s brought down yards from the try line. Held back from the castle door.

Forming a scrum, the team batters down the door. The ball is carried over.

The red dragon groans, but the white dragon roars in triumph.

The vast and complex world narrows to your sore throat, your aching body, your running nose and your fuzzy head.  It’s like a mixture of cotton wool and Velcro has been stuffed inside your mind. Your fluffy thoughts stick and catch but make no sense.

You can’t think straight.

You try to keep to your routine, but the pain triples. Minutes seem like hours.

Giving in, you go to bed.

Two days later, you can breathe again. With every breath the world expands and the memory of feeling ill floats away.

Thinking again, you forget you were ever ill.

She thought, life was a jigsaw.

That the longer she lived the more together she’d feel, the more visible the big picture would be.

But now she knows, there’re no edge pieces. Life is all about matching pieces. But new pieces appear, and old pairs will no longer work. Worse, pieces at the centre are lost. Impossible to replace. The picture must be rearranged.

Standing in a whirl wind, the life she knew blurs. But then she finds a piece that fits from the first hug.

But he already has a perfectly busy picture and nowhere for her to fit.

Leaning against the door frame, a husband asks his wife, “Do you remember the lily pond?”

“You dressed up as a prince, disguised as a frog,” she says, searching for crumbs on the cleaned kitchen worktop. Satisfied, she wrings out the cloth, imagining it’s his neck, and continues, “But this is the real world: bills, jobs, the baby screaming at 2am, shopping, cooking and cleaning. Where’s my fairy tale now?”

“In between it all,” he says, sliding two tickets across the sparkling surface, “In postcards, bonuses, chocolate, new shoes, and dancing!”

Two invitations to the Charity Ball lie between them.

Once there was a girl, with long blonde hair that she’d wear in a plait, down her back.

Growing up she was hardly bad, not the rebel and rarely asked for help.

She was good, but good was not enough. 

Her successes were forgotten because they were expected. Leading the way, she met the standard, but those that came after did better.

Grown up, she still wears her long blonde hair in a plait down her back.

But now everyone’s learnt to be great. Great at one thing, when she’s still good at many.

She’s good, but still not enough.

In the Game there’s an identifiable enemy, wearing a different strip.

In the Game we have known allies. Friends we train with, commiserate with, celebrate with and laugh with, about past mistakes.

In the Game there are rules that must be followed. Don’t let the fakes and the divas blur the certainty of the game.

In the Game there’s purpose; the goal to win. Bend the rules, don’t break them, or success will be an empty cup.

The way we win is as important as winning, because the game will end and then we’ll know for certain who we are.

Springing out of bed, a little boy races across the landing and launches himself on to mum’s bed.

“Is it time?”

“Too early, go back to bed. Please.”

Bouncing back to his room, he tells all his toys that today is the day, and they are all invited.

At breakfast he asks, “Is it time?”

At lunch he asks, “Is it time?”

At tea-time there’s a knock at the door.

Mum calls, “It’s time.”

But her little boy doesn’t hear.

He’s fallen asleep, in his smart shirt, with an arm round bear and his party hat slipping over his eyes.

Think of a grain of sand.

Just a millimetre squared piece of dirt. Maybe it’s pink, translucent, black, brown, red, lying beneath many other grains. On close inspection it’s unique, but at a distance it’s the same as the rest of the beach.

One of many.

It would not be missed by the child playing on the sand, but it would be missed by those closest to it. There would be an absence, an emptiness, where it had been but was no more.

To those closest we are unique and uniquely missed when we’re gone, even if only by one.