Ok, so I bought a notebook recently that says “I’M NOT HERE RIGHT NOW” on the front. I liked it because often when I am writing I am not here. My mind has taken me far away. I’m now writing a series of little bits and pieces in it based on the question “if I’m not here right now, then where am I?”
This is the first piece…
The Petal and the River Python
Today, I am not here. I am not me. I am a tiny furry creature clinging to the dip and sway of a magnolia branch. But I am not unsafe. Far from it, in fact. I believe that the breeze is merely trying to run its fingers through my spring-touched coat. It isn’t like its malicious cousin, the winter wind, that tore through my bones and shook them until all the heat fell out. Today I am a little mouse and I am on an adventure, my whiskers a-quiver At the end of the branch I pull the largest petal from its place, all white and soft and blushed with pink. I place it over my back and, just briefly, I am a tortoise.
I wouldn’t fool anyone though; I skitter back towards the stoic mass of the trunk as swift as a hare and weave my way down and to the ground. Today I am going on a boating trip. I place my pink and white coracle on the water, holding it steady. As the ripples rise and fall, the white of the petal is almost lost in the white of the clouds. In the same instant it is borne aloft by shadow, like the moon in the summer nights.
I climb aboard, carefully tucking my tail under me. I remembered the day my father and I had caught a fish as I had trailed it, absent-mindedly, through the cool blue. Of course, the water isn’t just blue. It’s a mix of lights and darks. Greens, greys, browns. Across the surface the exalting colours of the sunrise shimmer across the surface, forming shards as the water is puckered by the touch of the wind. Pink, red, orange; magenta, crimson, tangerine. A dash of violet.
The body of the river pulls past the reeds and gritty banks, off towards the sea. I push off from the bank and join the flow, drifting; fancying myself to be riding a litter on the back of an iridescent yet watery python as it bears me towards its mouth, and beyond.
Lizzie's Seven League Boots 