Melissa Julianne Severn's Writing Nook by Melissa Julianne Severn https://padlet.com/melissajuliannesevern/writingnook Songwriter, poet, fiction writer, madwoman. en-us 2022-08-31 10:34:40 UTC 2022-08-31 11:01:37 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f5dd.png Lakefellows - Prose extract melissajuliannesevern https://padlet.com/melissajuliannesevern/writingnook/wish/2277547428 Walking under heavy weather, my sandals made a demanding sort of sound on the blue-black cement of the path. I glanced fitfully at the sky and felt, rather than saw, that its texture was like that of wearing wool in the summer, a swamped softness that forebodes discomfort. I then focussed on the sun, determined to think of an elaborate way of describing its hardy veil of mustard-gassy clouds, sacrificing my eyesight for the sake of a good phrase. 

I felt like I owned the world that afternoon. I felt safe strutting down the street, like the storm-coloured cat from next door would scamper after me, scenting the lightning sheet I hid under my hair, the sulphurous rain contained in the moisture of my eyes, the vodka of hurricanes. 
      I had not wept that day, nor the day before. A fine achievement, I owned the world, or at least the afternoon, clip-clopping down to the lake to play saviour to the geese, flinging oats atop the algae, liberally, laughing with a discreet timbre of the malign as clumps fluttered down onto their backs, where they couldn’t contort their long silly necks to reach, where they were dappled greedily. 

My boyfriend leaned over and gave me a kiss with eyes I didn’t altogether like, they were puzzling over my spasmodic petty dilapidation of the geese’s rugged but fine sylvan aesthetic, and his kiss on my mouth was so quick that it made an ascending squeak like an inquisitive firework. 
      I scolded the bossier geese and coaxed the one with the poorly wings, his bones like snapped bamboo, sticking out from his sides as he hobbled in his petulant, unbalanced way, onto the ledge. I dropped a whole pile of oats before him, just for him, and distracted the others who tried to nip at his injuries with their own smaller, penalised piles. The coots came and my boyfriend, preferring their inconspicuous malice, took the oats from me and fed them discriminately. 

I guarded the goose with the poorly wings as though I was defending cult religion, and I knew that I would miss these relics of summer decay when the world turned a cloying pumpkin-orange, these oats pecked to powder by the Canada geese and the mallards and the coots, the moorhens whose noses were always bleakly on fire amongst the slimy reeds and drooping cattails, the white bulk of a swan by the bridge, seen from a distance, sparkling bluntly like a slap of paint on a plank of wooden fence, captivating only in comparison to the subdued tawniness of its lakefellows. 

© Melissa Julianne Severn 2022


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