Flash Fiction Friday 131: Drawings by Jade Kennedy

Welcome to Flash Fiction Friday and the one hundred and thirty-first piece in this series. This week’s is a 255-worder by poet, short story author and blogger Jade Kennedy. This story will be podcasted in episode 40 (with two other stories and some 6-worders) on Sunday 25th May.

Drawings

It started quietly on an autumn morning when the mists hugged everything to them and left nothing untouched. As the leaves fell, taking a song from the weather, so too did the ink fall from her skin, those interweaving roses and ivy, thriving with leaves and hidden birds lost its place in her delicate frame and slowly started to fade away, falling from her in graceful reverence almost like a sensual dance.

More ink faded away. Her fingertips dripped dark reds and blacks, leaving a trail of feathers, leaves and petals when she walked. She gave away those last birds and roses to others in the small hope of saving them, but they all wept through her fingers like sand, like so much lost time.

The draining of colour and all that adorned her didn’t stop with her skin. Her hair became as dull and brittle as ash, her beautiful blonde colouring being carried towards the clouds by a storm over a river silvered with fish. Lips that lost their pink joyful tint were replaced with a grey hue rich in melancholy.

Within three days, she stood before a mirror and watched her tears wash away the hazel from her eyes – a white canvas, beautiful, plain and colourless. Holding her hands to the sky, she called on the gods that took her beauty and that which coloured her soul. Feeling her dry skin, as distant and lifeless as a broken shell – now, all that she is would have to come from the inside.

I asked Jade what prompted this piece and she said…

I believe that people are creative and colourful on the inside and out. Of course the old saying is not to judge a book by its cover. Not all plain-looking people are boring and vice versa. It was fascinating to explore all this in ‘Drawings’.

Thank you, Jade. It was beautiful.

Jade Kennedy is a writer of poetry, prose, flash fiction and a collector of borrowed expressions. She lives in East Yorkshire, UK. Her poetry has been included in various zines and she is now looking to find more homes for her flash fiction. Her blog is ‘Borrowed Expressions’ at http://www.jadekennedywriter.blogspot.co.uk.

If you’d like to submit your 6-word or 500-word max. stories for consideration for Flash Fiction Friday take a look here, or up to 1,000 words for critique on my Online Short Story Writing Group (links below).

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