It's Still Life

At an Intersection Named After an English King and a Saint
Six Sentence Story: Part 25.1 Keep Yourself To Yourself, Girl

---

Hi, my name is Brigid, and this is my Show and Tell.

I’m named after St Brigid of Kildare, the patroness (that’s like a saint) of Ireland, the goddess of spring and fertility and life and poets and healing and prophecy, and some other stuff like maybe dandelions because I like dandelions and anything yellow (except for wasps), and if I were a Roman goddess I’d be somebody like Minerva, or maybe Athena if I were a Hellenic relic, but I’m not – although I’m almost 7-years old, and Mum’s always saying “I’m old enough to know better.”

My birthday is in a few weeks but I’m not inviting any of you for birthday cake because I’m not having a birthday party, and that’s because inviting 28 children into our wee house would bring the roof down … Mum said that, and she also said that we only have potatoes and cabbage in the kitchen garden, and she won’t feed 28 children boiled potatoes and cabbage as a birthday meal, but if you like boiled potatoes and cabbage you should come and eat some because that’s what I have to eat even though Mum says she can’t feed you guys that.

I spend summers with my grandmother; she is a pagan; I don’t want to be a saint like Brigid, or a pagan like Gran; I want to be the biggest and best tree in our forest, and I want to hold hands with it and sync my heart with its heart, and at night we will watch stars that pretend to be two-thousand fireflies, and we’ll watch chaos clash with clouds that make thunder.

I have a favourite tree; I call it my tree, and my grandmother says that my tree watches over me and would never allow me to be hurt if I fell through its branches to the ground, which I did once … fell a long way down and then stood up and walked home, and Gran gave me ice cream in case I broke any bones.

But my grandmother always says “Keep yourself to yourself, girl,” and I think she really hates that I’m doing this Show and Tell stuff.

---

Previous Instalments – To access all of the instalments on one page, please use this link

Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story (and because I was challenged to write 3 Sixes based on one prompt word, which is “relic”). 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.