Watering
Late afternoon in a small-town garden in high summer I stand watering. The soil drinks like an infant while the air stills, subatomic particles of space.
Earlier, in class, one of my best students complained, “Sometimes when I feel the urge to create, I don't know whether to grab my paints, my camera, my guitar or my pen.”
“You could have sex,” her friend, sitting in the desk next to hers, joked.
Not make love, not express your affection and desire in imaginative ways. Have sex. In other words, though I doubt she meant what she was saying, procreate.
The fat white daisies perk immediately; the drooping roses take a bit longer. The lavender doesn't seem to notice: some plants prefer life dry. I move on to shrubs, then grass. I water as though emptying my mind through the hose that snakes round my ankles like a mute animal.
“Oh, sex,” my multi-talented student had replied, “that's too easy.”
The class laughed and moved on. Moved with the ease and certainty of youth in high summer.
In my garden I continue to water. I don't think about babies, about embryos lost in blood and time. I don't think, I just breathe and water. I water and the spray evaporates from my skin, becomes clouds, becomes rain, becomes everything.
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Author's Note
Published in Per Contra http://www.percontra.net/17stahl.htm
This is amazing.
Just lovely reading. And I just heard a famous editor say sex is an act of capitalism, you have sex, like you have a tuna melt for lunch, but making love is a creative act, like writing.*
Love this. Simple language, beautiful imagery and a profound ending. Fav.
Wow. This is really nice. At first you don't think the first paragraph's metaphor will be important, but really it's everything/becomes bigger than these 233 words. I love when a writer makes such a move so seamlessly.
thanks, kind commenters.
I wrote this last summer for a good friend who wanted so much to have a child. she is due next month! :-)
This is all-around excellent. You’ve done so much with so few words.
The sound of one hand clapping ... what you see in an empty mirror. Stop the runaway horses. Perfect pitch, a song of songs. Makes you want to weep for no good reason.
Fav. I mean, in every way. Everything I love about flash fiction is here. So much in such a small space. Such amazing craftsmanship. Also it makes me glad my cw class is at a Senior Center!
Gorgeous. You wrap around so much stuff -- the casualness of 'sex', fertility and its opposite, the consequences of unintended pregnancy, nurturing our world, our plants, our young. Fav.
So sad and lovely and beautifully rendered.
So lean and strong and beautiful.
Fav.