THE FIDDLER

The last tourist left the dark corridors of the convent. Doors were locked. The gate was shut. The night fell on its grey roof. “Will you stop that fiddling for heaven’s sake?” Then the other angel crossed his arms, ear plugs in. Another sleepless night was laying ahead.

A GLANCE

Joseph’ s eyes were raised to the Holy couple, the Holy Babe returning his glance. The young girl was cradling her innermost self. “Thank God, it did not happen to me”.

FROZEN LADY

The brakes screeched. The train came to a stop on platform 7. With surprising agility, a bent miniscule lady climbed on and sat next to me. She pulled out a make up bag and touched on her pale blue eye shadows. Then she pulled out from her old fashion grey travelling bag, strewn with red roses, a small book and delved into it. “May I ask…” ”Just a curiosity, what are you…” She never replied in words. She only smirked at me between one word and the next. The train pulled in the next station. She put the booklet back in her bag to then dash on and out waving at me. “Madame! You dropped…” I tried to reach out to her through the window but in vain. So I placed it in my book. A bookmark with a frozen looking lady in frozen blue.

DISPATCHED

Dispatched unleashed  

A boarder in making

His mongrel behind

The boy posed tight lipped

His dismay.

ORANGE BLOOM

“Doesn’t it?” “Unmistakenly so”. “Just my exact thoughts”. “There is a glow…a light…” “A fire…a fire yes”.  “Kind of that yellow at the National…”. One of the visitors there assembled grabbed Father by his jacket. ”Do you happen to know when it was painted?”

THE DARK LADY AND THE YOUNG LASS

The dark veiled lady held the babe all the more tightly to her breast. I stood at the feet of my son’s cross. Yet you sit in many a lady’s bag or hang on families’ kitchen walls. I wore His crown of thorns. Saw his hands and feet bleeding. Your sweetly carved mouth stole the prayers. The lass unpinned her scarf, folded her infant in its folds then to place him at the feet of the Dark Lady of Sorrows. Before turning away, she tickled his feet. The Babe giggled.

BROODINGS

“You MUST try this Vicar! These cookies are simply GORGEOUS!” The old boy picked one of the chocolate stemmed jewels and enthusiastically bit into it. The filling! He should have known better. Chew on the right not the left, the dentist had recommended.  He held onto the grand feigning interest for the art on display. His mind fogged by pain. His features distorted in a dark grim. It took him all the 39 Articles to recover his graceful composure. Just in time to face the fatidic question. The church warden gleefully proffering a steaming cup: with or without sugar?

THE BID

Three thousand and two 1 three thousand and 2 2 three thousand and 3…”The stern lady” goes to Mrs Hemmington. Paula smirked. It cost her more than what she had planned, but that line of the nose had become an obsession since she had opened that page of the catalogue. The very first page she had stumbled on and there she was: a few decades down the line of time. Something familiar in the portrait of a stranger.

Thanking Saint Mark’s church for hosting today’s workshop on Dialogue for Literature& Cinema led by Kristina Darling as part of the Florence Literary Society events. Fun, hands on and thought provoking with plenty of room to discuss a rich variety of samples and produce our own pieces of writing along her clearly given challenging guidelines.