Chatterbox

Uncategorized 1 Minute

Written for Miz Quickly’s November Writing Prompt Day 3

Mum’s in the veggie garden chopping at the ground and I’m watching 
for worms, not wanting her to get them with the adze and sometimes I 
add a spadeful of rich brown dirt from the compost heap but mostly I 
just lean and watch and I tell her about the boy on the bus who pulls 
my hair and about the girls who have nothing to say to me because we 
don’t have TV and I tell her about my dream of the eagle who tried to 
fish me from Lake Toba, those great silver globes glistening on its 
talons and her plait slides around on her back with each great swing 
and the curls near her ears are damp and I tell her about how my pony 
won’t go more than a kilometre down the road before he starts backing 
and I can’t make him go forwards unless I turn for home and I tell her 
about how my piano teacher’s daughter drank that blue stuff that’s 
in freezer blocks and had to go to hospital and how the next door 
neighbour made me go into the bathroom with her while she used 
the toilet and isn’t that weird and how the other neighbour gets all 
her kids to run to the door barking to train their new Alsatian dog
and meanwhile Mum just keeps on digging, digging, digging.

Published by abigfatcanofworms

We all walk in the dark. But if we hold hands, perhaps the dark won't be as scary.

Published

13 thoughts on “Chatterbox”

  3. I love the sort-of stream-of-consciousness approach. So many random details, yet there’s a coherency here, too, held together by the mother’s constant digging…and that’s essentially what the child is doing, too–digging, digging, digging… The child’s character really comes out, and so does the mother’s, in a roundabout way. Delightful! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

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