Flash fiction, I think. LOL Orianna asked me to write a flash fiction about tasting green. I think that was it…
"How can you taste green?" she asked with a mixture of sneering and unabashed curiosity. "Green is a color, you can't taste colors." She had such a self-congratulatory look on her face, I simply couldn't resist, "What? You never ate a few Crayolas?"
Her sand freckled nose wrinkled up. "Certainly not. I am not a moron."
I laughed. She took offense. "I have a Masters degree from a very well respected Ivy League school. I can speak in italics too. So that means that I am not a moron either." I stuck my tongue out at her playfully. She giggled.
"Well, if your school was covered in ivy then I guess you had plenty of green," she observed and nodded her head with complete confidence.
She had no idea what a wonderful observation she had made. I giggled and nodded. I thanked her from the bottom of my heart. She plainly didn't understand, but she didn't need to understand. She happily scooped up her yellow pail and skipped over the tide sodden beach having clearly forgotten me and my foolish assertions.
I have always believed the best thing about children under the age of eight is how quickly they forgive. When you find yourself alone with a broken heart, the best thing you can do is plant yourself on a beach teeming with small children and wait. When one draws near, make an absurd assertion, and let the healing begin. Her name was Lily. My mind thought of lily pads and lily pads are green so I said, "Have you ever tasted green?"
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Green
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3 comments:
A skillfully drawn vignette, wistful and tender, but I still want to know how you explain tasting green.
I really enjoyed this! I love the way you sidestepped the tricky proposition of trying to poetically describe, in prose, the taste of green, brushing it off with a backhanded comment about eating crayons was brilliant. You managed to follow the spirit of the assignment and create a vivid and evokative piece of flash fiction.
Good job!!!
this is great. a lesson in brevity, for me, at least... i enjoyed the crayon solution that orianna mentioned. it keeps the speaker humble/human (and therefore more more likeable/easy to relate to)... the line about "well if your school was covered in ivy, you must have had plenty of green" is great- it took me a second read to get the double entendre... oh and i think "Sand freckled" should be hyphenated, i didn't realize the freckles _were_ sand at first.
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