Writing Exercise
Sarah Lamb | Creative Writing
Sarah Lamb | Creative Writing
In summer the steps burn the soles of my feet, in winter they are slick with early morning dew as the rain from the night before settles. Through each season they slowly wither away. The brown paint that my father used to slave away coating with layer after layer of paint are now faded and peeling. It’s on these three steps, or really now it’s just two steps and a couple slabs of concrete acting as a third makeshift step, that lead down into the garden of green grass and a black and white dog running in-between legs.
Now I sit on the steps dark at night, the cherry of a cigarette glowing in my trembling hands. I cling onto it as a sense of surreal emptiness fills me like air in a balloon. We all knew this moment, the news, a loss was coming. Yet all I can think is that I hope my mum never notices the missing cigarette from the packet hidden in the corner of the bottom of the old-fashioned wardrobe. With its clawed feet and big key, I'm just as surprised I didn’t find Narnia back there with the unopened pack. Getting lost in another world does sound rather empting right now perhaps I should go take another peek before my mother comes home and smells the smoke on my fingertips.
