It's Still Life

Previous instalments of this story: Part 1: The Pull Back   Part 2: The Measure of Her    Part 2: The Gatekeeper’s Response  Part 3: The Colour of Walls   Part 4: Tectonic Shifts  Part 5: Out of the Frying Pan  Part 6: How to Break Eggs Part 7: A Moon River  Part 8: Starlight Shines on the Roof  Part 9: Before When   Part: 9.1 Flower Power

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At an Intersection Named After an English King and a Saint
Six Sentence Story: Part 4 Tectonic Shifts

This man and a dog – they knock constantly on my periphery, and I look at my watch and rise from my chair, “Bonne nuit mon amour, and thank you for this lovely evening, Pierre,” and he says, “Dessert and coffee upstairs at yours, Brigid,” and I smile, “Thank you, but no, I am as full as a starry sky with food and drink,” and I pull the Six Sentence Café & Bistro card from Pierre’s white-knuckled-vice-like grip, slip it into my pocket, and step outside into the earthy light of a wood-colour moon.

I wake the next morning with two things in mind: Two 5-litre tins of Farrow & Ball dead flat ultra matt paint Green Smoke #47 that arrive later this afternoon, and secondly, if home means sash windows, and streets paved with people wrapped in bright colours and bright ideas … and where rain shines and fog unrolls from the core of breath itself … then I am home.

Idle thoughts aside, I have the morning to kill, to walk the street named after a saint with my heart in my bones to Mr Wowak’s grocery, he sells meats, fruit, chewing gum, tinned food and fish, and for small talk with him (he says there’s something wrong with him, but what he doesn’t know) — and I look at the address on Nick’s card, and inexplicably fancy myself as a flower that’s a weed that’s a flower (as my grandmother used to call me), and I’m off gliding like a waltz along the pavement, light footed as two legs in a full gallop.

I suppose it’s the thought of weeds being flowers that draws me into FlowerBx; I buy nine double pink peonies – they’re as precocious and full of promise as I thought I might be some day, but they’re equally fragile with drooping heads heavy as weather.

I step out of FlowerBx into a group of foraging sparrows – they take flight in front of me, and it’s at this moment, under the dusty rush and weight of their wings that my thoughts of a man and a dog are severed … I’m tuned into birds chattering rumours in the wind, and I am completely distracted and captivated …

and I walk straight into a bearded man walking with a large muscular black dog whose gyrating tail could do a serious amount of damage in a china shop.

“Fuck me,” says the man with a beard, who scrambles for balance and lands hard, the black dog’s tail is still spinning pirouettes, and I apologise profusely and probably more than what’s necessary, and I say, “Please let me help you up,” and he holds up his hand in that universally understood gesture of Stop and says, “Thank you, I can manage, thank you,” and he gathers himself together, returns the bouquet of peonies to me, and as he starts walking away, I say, “Your dog is lovely,” and he replies in a voice that reminds me of shifting tectonic plates, “He’s not my dog.”

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “Core”. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2024.