Australia
The child dances.
The ladies titter behind gloved hands, plastic eyes and ruby red lips. Hair in perfect formation, single file, no lagging there at the back. Lashes curling waves from oceans of cold, powdered white. Queens of dust and flies.
The child dances.
The men grumble, grunting pigs with solid cores and leather coatings. Tufts of hair peek from below crossed arms. Oil and dirt. The stench of beer and stale tobacco. Smoke from the barbecue mingled with the grey sky, grey faces.
This is the future? A life within and without, every word and action a facade. The women flocking like birds, twittering and flapping around cold glasses of raspberry cordial. The men silent, eyes on the football, hand on the beer, safe in their stone cages.
The child dances.
And then one day, the child stops.
Comments
How sad that the child stopped dancing, that the confines of that life got him…..Maybe the inner child will learn to dance once more and break free from the chains this way of life has cast upon him.
good writing, enjoyed reading it. cheers xx
the child stops dancing because the child grows up and you don’t just dance (in this setting) when you are grown up? I am forever seeing and hearing the stories of the people who have breaken free from lives they grew up with but which they look back on harshly. Does anyone live the life of their parents?
The dry, arid landscape is reflected in the relationships dry and arid of love. The child, full of energy, innocence and life, does only what it knows best, it dances. It dances a rain-dance, calling the rain, begging it to come and douse the dusty, hot plains. To fill the trenches in the ground with life, with water, with love. Nobody notices and the drought continues.
Beautiful writing, I can really relate. I didn’t grow up in the country but my father did. I know a fair bit about the country and the lives of country people, and the essence of your writing speaks to me. Thank you for sharing it :D
This is incredible… I identified sooo much with what you were writing… small town south africa (where I’m from) would fit right in there. Wow.