Writing Prompt 27: Reflection
Eight Minutes to Reach the Earth
Write a memory, a poem, a song about space. Either outer space, your physical space, your mental space, your outside space. Or maybe all of them, all at once. You choose.
The sun bathed my face as I lay in the middle of the floor.
The window magnified the heat until I was certain smoke was rising from the tip of my nose. It had been bleak for months, the winter long, difficult and cold. The sun bounced along the horizon, never fully rising or setting but never warm and never light.
Today was different.
I let my body absorb the heat. A calm filled my eyeballs as I stretched out my arms over my head feeling the legs of my dog, feeling where the tendons lengthened alongside the bone. She stirred and licked my hand. She licked at my hair and the top of my ear the sensation making me giggle.
I scrunched up my knees and took my hands away. Her tail hit the floor wagging and thumping rhythmically against the carpet. Thump. Thump. Thump. I sat up and opened my eyes. The room dimmed as a cloud drifted across the sun. Sheba growled.
“It’s just a cloud,” I say, rubbing her head. “Just a cloud.”
Sheba lay back down and licked her lips revealing her small sharp teeth like pegs in a line-up along her gum line. I go to stand but I can’t quite get my balance and fall back onto my tailbone. A sharp pain shoots up my spine and tears well in my eyes suddenly. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and try again.
Story first posted June 2020 // Photo: Tanya Clarke 2020
