Competition Thirty-Three Shortlisted: Scatterbrain by Karen Arnold
Mornings that crawl past like glaciers, dust motes caught in sunbeams, dancing, whirling, mesmerising. Books forgotten. Pens lost. Dinner money left on the bus again. Words that dance on the page. Numbers that just won’t add up.
Outside, you know the green world is humming and buzzing. The world inside your head is a snow globe of hawthorn blossom, a gale of crow feathers, a deep knowing of stickleback and otter, a dictionary of lost words. Your mind moves faster than the flash of a kingfisher. My river child, green leaf boy, a wild thing made to sit still, to think in straight lines.
Afternoons that move as slowly as treacle falling from your grandmother’s wooden spoon, a clock that ticks like a death watch beetle, your head nodding like a poppy over your reading book.
Outside, a cuckoo is calling. No one here knows the things you know. Latin names and hidden nests, the flame belly of a newt, the tiny bones inside an owl pellet. You are given extra time and fidget toys and bewildered kindness. You are given puzzled looks and frustration and he could achieve so much if he wasn’t such a scatterbrain.
Summer evenings that are all yours boy of mine, I see you zigzag across the fields, limber as a willow sapling, fleet as a deer. You glow in the twilight, pale skin luminous under a rising finger nail of moon, soft as a moth wing. You tell me the names of stars, the phases of the moon, what the weather will be like tomorrow and why. You are still talking as your eyes close, fingers busy on the edge of your quilt.
Go to sleep little scatterbrain, while I work a charm to protect us both from all the kindly, tidy minds.
Karen Arnold is a writer and psychotherapist . She came to writing later in life, but is busy making up for lost time. She is fascinated by the way we use narratives and story telling to make sense of our human experience. She won the Mslexia prize for flash fiction in 2022. She has work in The Waxed Lemon, The Martello,and Roi Faineant amongst others. She can be found on twitter @aroomofonesown_4
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