A series of shorts

Last night I was feeling creatively restless, and asked my friends on Twitter and Facebook to give me prompts for drabble writing.  If you don't know what a drabble is, and many people don't, it's defined by Wikepedia as a story of exactly 100 words, not including the title.  I know that in fandom, this is absolutely true with whole communities springing up around the art and challenge of writing drabbles.  In other places, however, I've seen this refer to any short work that's under about 500 words.  It's this second, possibly wrong, definition that I was working with last night.  I got some very interesting prompts out of my friends, and one delightfully hilarious and creatively brilliant conversation on Twitter out of it.

I managed to do 100 words exactly for one prompt (The Kremlin), and totally blew up the other two prompts (dead fish & an ornithologist; "what I found on the way to the laundry room in the basement").  I'm sure I could have worked the other two down to 100, I've done it before, but I kinda like what came out.  The question is, will you?



What I found on the way to the laundry room in the basement: Lovely in My Eyes

The Kremlin: In the Shadow of My Father's Kingdom

Dead Fish and an Ornithologist: Copper Gulls

Copper Gulls

This was written in response to a prompt for a self-imposed challenge.  The prompt: dead fish and an ornithologist. go!

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Keturah turned to her colleagues in disgust, tossing the dead fish at their collected feet. "This is why the birds aren’t eating. You’re feeding them dead fish! What kind of researchers are you?"

"If I may say, Dr. Leeds, with all due respect, they weren’t dead when we gave them to the birds."

Keturah’s brassy eyebrows climbed. "Pardon?"

"I know we seem incompetent, not calling you sooner when we realized we had a problem, but we do know enough to feed this group live fish. We know they don’t eat anything else."

Properly chastised, but too proud to show it, Keturah turned from her colleagues and studied the fish strewn around the outdoor aviary. She knew there had to be something going on. It was more like these birds to overeat when given the opportunity, not peck at their food. They hyper-smart things were--

"Oh."

In the Shadow of My Father's Kingdom

This was written in response to a prompt given to for a self-imposed challenge.  The challenge?  "The Kremlin"

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The son of a former spy and sometimes assassin, he had always been discreet. After all, he’d witnessed his mother’s "accidental" death at the hands of her husband’s political beliefs when he was five, and had only narrowly escaped the accident himself.

But watching Karina walk away, with her firm but sad "No" still constricting his heart, he wondered if he’d been keeping secrets for too long.

"Karina! Wait!"

Making a scene went against everything his father had ever taught him. Hiding was best done by being ordinary. But ordinary was letting his future walk out the door.

"Let’s talk."

Lovely in My Eyes

This was written in response to a prompt received from a self-proposed challenge. Prompt and challenge are at the end.

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There was the basket as always. No matter how many times I did the washing, it never seemed to empty. I guess it’s a good thing. Means we’re all alive and kicking. But, still, I often felt it’d be nice if it’d disappear for a while or pass to someone else to do.

But if it’d passed for someone else to do, I’d’ve not seen her dancing that day.

I’d picked up the basket as always. It was my day for washing, so I was going about it, thoughts turning every which way as they often did. But there were always things on the stairs, enough that I always had to be careful, enough that I always had to pull my rambling thoughts in and focus. So I had been being careful. I’d pulled my thoughts from their wanderings and focused on the wood under my feet.

And because I was focusing, I heard her before I could see her. Lovely music made of pipes and lights, flutes and earth, such as I didn’t hear in this house. Who had left a radio on, I wondered; and what station was it, I wanted to know. I wanted to hear the music again.

But as I ventured further down, I could see colors, too, that didn’t belong in our boring laundry room. Green and gold and brown and black. Color and light and shadow twined and turned in ways I’d never seen them do, like they danced for the music on the radio that I must have.

There was no accounting for that, so I ducked down to look. Had someone brought something down and left it running on one of the machines? It was beautiful and I must know what it was, too.

Huzzah!

Agreed! @KaiLeakes At @DragonCon I was panelling & said that I want interracial couples that *aren't* white_POC too! #DiversityinSFF
— Diana M. Pho  (@writersyndrome) September 4, 2013

YES!  Someone will want to read my kdrama-esque steampunk novel featuring an Afro-Japanese couple trying to navigate courtship in the midst of class, race and family & cultural expectations (basically in that order), with the help of the best friends who are Jewish and dark-skinned Indian, respectively, all while trying to stay one step ahead in the world of steampunk fashion. 

I'M NOT WRITING IN VAIN!  Woo.  That's nice to know.  Wanna see?

12:13am, 7/14/13, hours after the verdict

This poem has been kicking around, waiting to be born for a while now.  Once upon a time I worked for a lovely organization that builds schools for underprivileged boys, primarily of color, in the NY metro area.  As someone working on the foundation (support) level, I read a lot of the research concerning boys in education in general, and boys of color in education in particular.  The stats for both groups are terrible.  I've since become more sensitive to issues concerning young men of color, and stress every helpful tip I ever learned to every mother with a son.

Then Trayvon Martin happened, and a host of other shootings of young brown men in the city and around the nation.  Tonight (technically last night, but I haven't gone to bed yet), Martin's shooter, George Zimmerman, was acquitted.  Half my twitter feed is alive with the news and reactions to the news.  I was doing okay--saddened, upset, annoyed--until Salli Richardson made this post on Instagram (sharing it via Twitter).  Then the poem that had been kicking around, waiting its turn to be born, giving me false positives when I saw an adorable brown baby boy, came pouring out of me.  And now I can't stop crying.  Which is a problem b/c I need to be up at 6 for church (I'm slow).

Anywho, poem.

12:13pm, 7/14/13, hours after the verdict, my beautiful baby boy

Dear Son of my womb

waiting to be born

waiting for Husband and Mother to be joined

I am scared for you

Beloved love of my life

they hate the very thought of you

You strike a fear in them that is revered on screen

and reviled on streets

They have told themselves how you walk

they have told themselves how you think

they have told themselves what you feel

and that that feel is fear

And though it shames me to say

I have sometimes believed their lies too

that a man that looks like you would could mean me harm

and a man that looks like they do could do me no wrong

though they are already plotting for your life yet unformed

Dear Son of my womb

what am I to do?

You precious gift of God

where could I hide you?

What kind of armor could I give you?

I am your mother, dear,

or I will be

isn’t it my job to keep you from all that hurt you?

Surely the advice that "you sometimes have to let them fall"

doesn’t include "let them get thrown up against a wall when he’s done nothing at all"?

Surely other mothers don’t worry

about rescuing their sons from precincts for crimes uncommitted and undefined

instead of principles' offices

Surely surely surely

they will see my baby boy’s beautiful mind

and not that he is a Black boy

older than six

taller than 5’

who fits a descrip

How long can it go?

I made a recent twitter comment about the kookie things my natural hair was doing to me in public the other day, to the amusement of my fellow Twitter-OTers. (Mission accomplished.)  That led to more silliness and a not-unusual question for ppl who only know each other online of "how long is your hair anyway?"

This shouldn't be a hard question to answer.  I mean, it's hair.  It's this long or that long. Except...well...my hair is kinky-curly.

What does that mean? It means my hair curls so tightly more than half their length is in deep hiding. I'm telling you there are people in witness protection who wish they were hidden as well as the true length of my hair.

To illustrate, here is a picture of my hair taken a few minutes ago.  I've been wearing it in this style nearly all week (except today when I had it up in a little afro-puff).  It's pulled back about 2-3" from my hairline by a very tight headband.

And here's a picture of my hair taken a few minutes later (please excuse my computer glove).  The only difference is that I've randomly chosen a curl, and pulled it out as far as it could comfortably go.  If you could see detail, you'd see that the hair still isn't straight.  If it had been chemically relaxed or otherwise straightened, it'd be even longer!

So how long is my hair?  Eh, it depends...