Wishing you all a great weekend, starting of course with this, your writing prompt for today:
22
He said I was an egg. That meant naivety, a lack of development, but also strength. I said he was a turnip. He said, I don’t want to play anymore.
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How to decorate eggs, our teacher showed us, first you blow out the insides. Back home, I blew six eggs and tipped their insides down the drain. Mum wasn’t pleased.
ReplyDeleteLet’s play House. Here is a baby. I will be Mum. You have to be Dad and go out to work. Okay, I’ll play on my own with the baby.
ReplyDeleteThe wordy duel between them
ReplyDeletewhich came first,
chicken or egg,
or the egg or chicken,
the debate took drastic turn,
no more eggs in the house,
only radishes ,turnips.
I said he was a merman, water his element. He said he needed protection, stepped into his coracle and pushed it onto the surface of the river, away from me.
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning, things happened unbelievably fast. He hadn't really thought about anything at all, had just been swimming along minding his own business when he met up with this girl. It was hard to get to know her at first but he just knew that inside that tough exterior, was something quite magical. That old cliché of 'two become one' and a number of irritating love songs swam around in his head. It was time to settle down.
ReplyDeleteThey were the perfect match. Darwinian theory had never meant anything to him before; out of all the others, he was the one luckiest to have made it into her heart and things had never looked so good. Sometimes, it was hard to see where she ended and he began, such was the intensity of their bond. Remembering his singular past and the freedom he had enjoyed, he would try to look at her, to get some perspective on the situation, but he began to doubt whether he was capable of distancing himself from her body long enough to capture such a view. And so he gave up. They became inseparable.
By the time he noticed that she had begun to resemble a walnut it was too late. Soon, other fruit and vegetables came to mind every time he looked at her in the mirror; a satsuma, a pear, a swede and finally a watermelon.
One day, she told him that she needed to get out. He hadn't seen this coming. They say that before a tsunami, the tide suddenly disappears from the shoreline before the massive surge on to the land. There had probably been a trickle that he hadn't noticed. All that was left of their home was a bare, tattered shell. She even took the afterbirth with her.
The chef scratched his stubbly head with fingers shining from fresh scaldings. He muttered to himself. “Egg and Turnip compote? Turnip with an oeuf glaze? Puree of turnipy egg?. Tricky.”
ReplyDeletethis really made me laugh this morning, thank you. I've been tuning in and reading all the work, haven't submitted anything really, sorry, November is passing me by, but what a wonderful project again, thanks Sarah and Lynne
ReplyDeleteAnnie Clarkson
If an egg is symbolic of the universe, with creation surrounded by a yellow sun, I’ve just dripped a few galaxies down my shirt. Pass me a napkin, would you?
ReplyDeleteTurnips she called
ReplyDeleteout,staring at
the cardboard box,
I kissed her cheek-
'let's have them
for breakfast'
perfectly scrambled
we shared a feast-
tuned in
to mum's
new dictionary.
echulme@hotmail.com
OK, he fell. Yeah, and he was raw, but you can’t blame the king’s horses for trampling him and for making a mess. Somebody pushed him. Didn’t you, Your Majesty?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe artichoke boiled in the pan like a fizzling grenade: he prodded it with a knife, peeled off its armour, battled towards its heart. He said I was an artichoke.
ReplyDeleteHi Lynne and Sarah
ReplyDeleteJust wondering if we can post more than once each day?
Thanks for taking the brrrrr out of November
Sarah.
Have you seen a turnip? Forget the unsubtle symmetry of eggs, turnips are lusciously multicoloured, smooth and shapely. Who, biting into an egg, could say ‘I have a cunning plan’?
ReplyDeleteHe said I was an egg. That meant naivety, a lack of development, but also strength. I said he was a turnip. He said, I don’t want to play anymore.
ReplyDeleteMy mother wonders why I’m not married. I tell her the story.
“What’s that got to do with anything? Stop analyzing things so much and just get on with it. You’re 35! I had you three by the age of 31. What’s anything got to do with breaking up over a turnip? Stop calling men vegetables and put some effort into it!”
On the way home I mentally ran through the last key moments in each of the breakups over the past few years.
It all went wrong with Alan when we went on holiday together and he insisted on bringing his sister with us.
Then there’s Sacha. I lived with him for two years. He grew a beard and I just couldn’t get over how much he reminded me of Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams. I just went off him.
My university years were wasted on a long distance relationship with a German exchange student. Bizarrely, this is the longest of my relationships. Yet, in all I doubt if we ever spent more than six months actually in each other’s company.
With Greg, the turnip thing didn’t cause the break up but was an example of a long line of awkward moments. You can’t have awkward moments with a man who may see you give birth. Marriage is a series of moments that could potentially be cripplingly awkward.
Later I phoned my Mum and told her that I was going to concentrate on making the most of what’s been offered to you.
“Like you and Dad,” I said, absent-mindedly.
“Good,"she said. "Life’s not a Jane Austen, you know.”
He knows I hate turnip.
ReplyDeleteI might be an egg, a good egg even, but he is a turnip, a turnip head like the old England football manager.
I won.
She’s a pear-shaped, carrot-topped beanpole,
ReplyDeletewith tits like turnips
and knees like knobbly artichokes.
Everything she says is
rhubarb, so why, oh why
is she the apple of his eye?
freya_scott@yahoo.com
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIt started as a bit of fun, a game to wile away the time, but when she chose the dare instead of the truth, he wished he'd never suggested it.
ReplyDeleteI used to wish that I was a girl. That meant I would be pure, that I would finally be beautiful. I would finally be popular, not shunned into darkness.
ReplyDeleteJamieson Wolf
jamiesonwolf@gmail.com
He fell off the wall, yellow seeping out.
ReplyDeleteYou always were an egghead
I said, leaving him.
The King’s men and horses were otherwise engaged,
so the game was over.
Mary Rose.
They're egging me on. They don’t know how it feels when your mouth goes dry so you can’t say a word and the girl stares at you like you’re insane.
ReplyDeleteBoiled
ReplyDeleteChocolate
Fried
Poached
Fertilised
Soldiers
Omlette
Pickled
Cracked
Empty
Rotten
Blessed
Scrambled
Lightly
Raw
Cooked
Hard-boiled
Lost
Hidden
Benedict
Curried
Sushied
Divine
Slippery
Broken
Dropped
Buried
Released
Secretive
Round.
The turnip didn't want to play either after that, so it was just me and the egg. The egg said 'Want to roll down the lawn?' I smiled and nodded.
ReplyDeleteHe blows the egg
ReplyDeleteThrough a microfissure in its side.
It does not hurt
The unformed life. This is no
Eulogy. Nothing to praise.
All that is left: a shell.
Mum said a tomato was a fruit not a vegetable. I said, why don’t you keep your tomatoes in the fruit bowl then? Mum didn’t have an answer to that.
ReplyDeleteHe kept bullying her to come out of her shell, so she did; then life pinned her down with a big claw, and bit her head off with sharp teeth.
ReplyDeleteMartin
My wife doesn't understand me. It was just a little yolk with the girl next door. Nothing serious, just baking a sponge cake. But all she thought was root vegetables.
ReplyDeleteredjim99
jimbarron@walkauvergne.co.uk
Seems it’s always the one who lives in the glass house that feels the need to throw stones. Me? I’m just trying to keep from getting caught in the crossfire.
ReplyDeleteIn Great Britain the British Egg Information Service stamp all chicken eggs with a little lion. It is a mark of good quality. Why can't they do that to people?
ReplyDeleteGerry said
ReplyDeleteMy new friend ran indoors.
Don't YOU EVER tell tales, they said.
It impressed me.
When they missed the board, I drew the dart
from my leg, without a word.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete