When a spark leads to a story, even the writer can be surprised

I have just finished a five-week 'Spark your Writing' session with a terrific group of writers who produce creative work 'sparked' each week by a word quote and image (painting or photo). It consistently amazes me what different stories we write from the same words or picture -- a personal essay, a prose poem, a creative nonfiction piece, a fictional story -- the options are limited only by the writer's imagination and desire to create. That is the beauty and power of creative response to what is in front of us. 

In response to last week's sparks, I wrote a short fictional story that I share below. Its style is unusual for me and I had fun experimenting in this genre. I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to hear what you think of it.  

THE SPARK

…I thought how private we have all become. How self-sufficient. Of course, we are all members of the community we live in. While in the past, they would have been cogs, wheels, brackets, levers, pulleys, each making their society work according to their skills and position. Now we are all like ball bearings, complete in ourselves and joining other ball bearings only to form shapes that suit our purpose…

Adapted from Meet Me at the Museum
an epistolary novel by Anne Youngson, p. 45

---------

THE STORY: "Dezzy's story"

Skin and bones. Flesh and blood. Muscles and tendons. Heart and lungs and all the other organs. These amazing human parts hold us together, keep us breathing, living, moving. But what brings us alive, makes life the wonder it can be, is love and care — and the connections between us that they can weave.

When love and care are absent, then absence is sometimes the better choice.

So it was for Dezzy. This is his story.

As soon as it stopped raining, Dezzy raced down the street, leaping over the puddles until he came to the big oak tree with the odd-angled branch sticking out over the sidewalk. He knew, just knew, today was the day. He leaped up, grabbed that branch and swung himself up into tree. He had been practising, so he landed perfectly on his feet on the bigger branch above. He balanced carefully, stood tall, raised his arms and said three times, loudly: ‘Take me. Take me. Take me.’ Took a breath, then added, ‘Now — take me now.’ Before he could draw another breath, he was pulled up through the branches by an awesome force, up beyond the tree canopy, up into the sky. His body began to vaporize, dissipating, becoming one with the clouds.

The sound of his mother calling him home to supper was so faint he could barely make out the words, though he knew her voice, the cadence of that familiar call. But he didn’t heed it. Not today. Today, he felt lighter than ever, happier than ever — less than ever, yet more his true self than he had ever felt before. He was not Dezzy any more. He was the sky itself, the world, the universe. He was life, was breath — and he was free.

At home, his mother cursed him for being late to the supper table where his father was already on his second helping of pork button stew and muttering about that no-good boy who didn’t deserve the food that was put on the table for him.

But Dezzy was well beyond reach now. He would never return to that table or those parents. They would have to find a new scapegoat for their own shortcomings and wretched unhappiness in the life they had stitched for themselves. Dezzy had disentangled himself, was up and away in a new form.

He was a ball bearing — smooth and round with good momentum — rolling through the majesty of the skies and into the magic of the heavens. Searching for new connections, a better fit. He just knew that up here, somewhere beyond the earth, there was the perfect match for his sparkling multi-faceted rainbow-coloured self.

..............................................................................................................

To receive my weekly blogpost in your inbox, use the SUBSCRIBE feature (above, in the left-hand column), or email fiveyearsawriter at gmail dot com. Put SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. 

Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash