50 Things

List 50 things you'll never do.

Never; an eternity of nothings.
50 seems like a huge number, stretching on and on through the vast, empty space of my imagination.
I can't think of one thing, let alone 50…


Oh, I'm the definition of a time-waster. I need not apply.
Pick up the pen. My hand feels full of wasps. A single stroke:

1

And finish:

1.

Rest, now; my wasp-hand becomes a cavern, echoing with the leaden screeching of over-use.

I shall form a letter.

1. N

Keep going…

1. Never

This has taken eons.
I can't bear the sound the pen makes as it touches the paper; a nit-picking scritch of expensive metal on the sheet. A thousand years later, I take up the pen again.

1. Never fall

This word was easier than the first. And another easy one -

1. Never fall in

I can feel myself ageing. Why do the letters take such a number of strokes to form? I can run faster than I can write. Another word, a big word, a huge word, laden with promises and gasps and tears and smiles and ecstasy:

1. Never fall in love

The four-letter word that's on everyone's lips.

1. Never fall in love with

I hardly had to think about that one. A word has spilled from my fingers without me even realising it. Maybe I'm getting into this.
And now. My grand finale, my pièce de résistance, my coup de grâce. Three letters and I am finished. I pretend I can't hear the pen laughing at me. I pretend I have the strength in my wrist to pick it up, even though it weighs a thousand tonnes and my arm muscles scream at me to stop.

1. Never fall in love with you

The feelings I have writing the last word remind me of…
Funny that.

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Written for the prompt "List 50 things you'll never do". I couldn't think of 50 things, so I wrote a piece using the prompt instead!

I like this one. It's fun to experiment with structure. And it's always fun to pretend you're writing from another person's mind, if you see what I mean. I hope it doesn't get boring!

I'm off to University very, very soon. I have so many feelings about going it's absolutely impossible to identify them and write them here for you. I'll let you imagine.

Proverb I

Silence is a great healer.

It certainly heals you.

I see your bones begin to knit neatly together through your skin. Your skull, in the past a hive of twisted ideas – sprung from seeds sown by an angry boy into fertile ground, beanstalk – is stitching together its grin once more.

Joints pop, knuckles crack, nothing but the faintest whisper of sound in the blanket – suffocating – of thick, cloying hush. I see your hands twitch. They are fixed.

I can hardly bear to watch as you are resurrected. It’s not fair. Whereas I live in a whirl of sound and noise, a blasting, blaring, loveable racket that is as much a part of me as my very heart, you are not on my team any longer.

You don’t speak.

Silence is a great healer, and now you’re on its side.

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Written for the prompt "Proverb: Silence is a great healer". I like it, but I really think it has a lot more potential that I haven't explored!

I'm going to Birmingham uni! :D So excited, but so drowning in paperwork!