no story
rarely do i not have a story upon completion of a sketch. but this time i don't. do you?
I was hoping that my friends would help me with not just a title for this sketch but a little story as well. And when I say ‘little’, I mean a few pithy lines. Thank you, Reda Salem, for being the first to volunteer.
Thanks, everyone for taking the time to really think about this drawing and submitting your versions of the truth. I’m going to be exhibiting the stories alongside the book this sketch is in.
reda salem's 'title' has a pre-existing story
This is Latifa. She’s just been left the flowers by her son Abdul Aziz. He’s left the room now, and returned to his home. Already she’s forgotten she had a visitor, she didn’t even know him as her son when he came in. Soon she’ll forget she is holding flowers. One by one they’ll fall to the floor and be picked up by her maid. Next week Abdul Aziz will return with more flowers. He’ll never know they fall to the floor. Unless his mother’s maid tells him.
cooper, i didn’t know you had such a sensitive side. your story is so sad and beautiful. i hope you don’t know anyone with alzheimer’s. thank you for your story x
wow. favorite story.
Fatima is the flowers carrier. Her job is not to sell flowers though. She carries flowers to trace history, or rather her-story. Each year she picks a certain kind of flowers to carry around. Before the end of the year Fatima has to give all of the flowers away. Friends, family, lovers, and even strangers who earned a flower shall be a part of her-story forever. So many kinds. Lilies were gloomy she thought, roses were cliched. Her favorites were tulips, she gave me to her female lovers only. This year Fatima picked an unknown kind of flowers. It is the year of uncertainty after all. No one earned a flower this year but the cold floor.
i’m loving these stories. who’d have thought that flowers could evoke such melancholy? thank you.
Flowers seemed like a good idea at the time. She imagined he’d be charmed by the whole thing.
‘He’ll change his mind, I know he will.’
Girls don’t give boys flowers. Stupid girl.
she does seem stupid. thank you, m
She smiled, looked up through her eyelashes and pretended to be pleased to receive the flowers.
Mother will be proud.
I was sure I picked up seven. Oh well. Now then, where did I leave my shoes…
Her garden is huge, she wouldn’t miss a few wilting flowers.
And besides, she’s a bitch.
Aileen tried to validate taking the flowers but she still felt a little guilty. A little.
She had no way of knowing if the woman was a bitch, she only moved into the lovely house across the road two days ago.
Aileen put the flowers down on the table as she stood up with a clumsy wack that spread petals and leaves everywhere like conffetti. She humphed.
‘I will get to know her. I shall be her friend.’
She smoothed her already shiny slick hair and gathered the flowers. Ordered the flowers. Picked away the debris around the flowers . Blew away any imaginary specks of dust and tied the flowers with a shiny blue ribbon she had saved from a gift she received last Christmas.
Proud of herself, Aileen slapped her flat feet across the street.
Jessica Feldman opened the door.
‘Hi! I’m Aileen and I’d like to welcome you to the neighbourhood.’ She smiled wide, shoving the flowers a little too close to Jessica. ‘From my garden!’ she smiled wider noticing Jessica’s beautiful, cosmetically enhanced smile.
How sweet, thought Jessica but went on to hide her confusion as she glanced over to Aileen’s crusty lawn and back at the familiar flowers.
‘Please come in. We were about to have dinner, won’t you join us?
‘Oh thank you, but I’m having dinner with my boyfriend.’ she waved her hand inappropriately. Aileen doesn’t have a boyfriend and had never even been kissed before. She is 46, greying, drying up and her only companion is the cat she hates.
She spun on her heel and with her sloppy gait skipped back to her house past Mr Koukal who was trimming his pristine hedges.
‘Good evening, Mr Koukal.’
Mr Koukal didn’t say a word and shifted, squaring his back to Aileen. Aileen chose not to notice.
Aileen sat back at the table and picked more imaginary dust off the table. She looked up at the empty vase on her kitchen’s window sill.
‘I need more flowers.’ She thought.
We latch on to beauty because it’s ephemeral. But Rania didn’t know that. She tightened her clutch on a bouquet of new roses. They truly were beautiful.
And then they were gone.
Sara received flowers from a secret admirer today. This surprises her. She doesn’t think of herself as a girl that inspires flower-giving male attention. She takes the flowers uncertainly. “I wonder who it is,” and looks up, as if the ceiling had answers.
A haiku:
Seven. But one falls.
Seated, I call onto thee
“Why must beauty wilt?”
she thought perhaps the tiger would be appeased with a marigold. but neither of them were in a particularly good mood that morning…
-Brenna via Facebook
She was not a conventional girl. She didn’t mind bringing the flowers or showing up barefoot, on a first date. When he did not show, she let the long stem roses drop to the ground – one at a time…
-Yahia Lababidi via Facebook
Suddenly it dawned on Bertha: the one who got away really was the best of the bunch.
“All 7 and we’ll watch them fall…”