THE PERIWINKLE WATERFLOWER
It usually grew near — or even in — waterfalls. Mainly near, because it didn’t endure long enough to be seen when actually budding in such downward rushes. Why am I so concerned to impart this information? I told Sally why, but she’s too shy to tell others in case they engage her in conversation. Maybe it was her size that made her self-conscious. Or the flecks affecting her skin. So I thought I’d better write at least some of this down before my knowledge of matters would be lost. Periwinkle is a colour between blue and purple as well as an item of nature study in itself. Bless its heart. Brings out a smile when I think of it, especially as a colour that Sally often wears as the colour of speckled designs in her frocks. She often called it lavender, not periwinkle. But I insisted on my terminology. And she gurned in assent, and she now calls it periwinkle. Here, though, in the main, I use the word as an adjective of colour, not as a noun representing a non-invasive plant common to our lands, waterfalls or not.
Sally, a wallflower? Well, true, I first encountered her sitting at the side of a dance floor watching the various couples sweeping by her in ostentatious waltzing motions. Her best frock, evidently, but nobody noticed. Except me. And I engaged her in conversation, because I had been too long idling in the shadows or sidelines, nursing a half drunk half a bitter in a dimpled glass. I sat one seat away in a whole row of otherwise empty seats, and set in motion my only chat-up line. Sorry, that sounds a bit of a crude expression, as I only wanted to bring a smile to her face, with no other intentions present in my mind. Ice-breaker is better than chat-up line. I might rewrite all this. But it is important to get it straight first-off, my frame of mind changing by the moment. All needs to be conveyed as part of what I initially called the Periwinkle Waterflower. Nothing can shift that, as I somehow believe myself to be the only one that survived the ice age that followed the planetary exodus ironically caused by constant invasive heatwaves. At least it is known that human life survived. Or at least whoever wrote this survived.
I look down as if into a mirror of lavender-tinged water and see, below it, seeming sheets of frozen freckles end to end, very twinkly with dimples and woken stars eager to become suns. And I smile at my own perverse misnomers simply written down to mislead you towards a denial that words and any who read them will inevitably vanish. And, like a newly launched galleon, I watch her sally forth, in blue, upon the universal dance floor of an even bluer sky. Large enough to allow mere mortals to see. Bless her heart.
(written today)
It usually grew near — or even in — waterfalls. Mainly near, because it didn’t endure long enough to be seen when actually budding in such downward rushes. Why am I so concerned to impart this information? I told Sally why, but she’s too shy to tell others in case they engage her in conversation. Maybe it was her size that made her self-conscious. Or the flecks affecting her skin. So I thought I’d better write at least some of this down before my knowledge of matters would be lost. Periwinkle is a colour between blue and purple as well as an item of nature study in itself. Bless its heart. Brings out a smile when I think of it, especially as a colour that Sally often wears as the colour of speckled designs in her frocks. She often called it lavender, not periwinkle. But I insisted on my terminology. And she gurned in assent, and she now calls it periwinkle. Here, though, in the main, I use the word as an adjective of colour, not as a noun representing a non-invasive plant common to our lands, waterfalls or not.
Sally, a wallflower? Well, true, I first encountered her sitting at the side of a dance floor watching the various couples sweeping by her in ostentatious waltzing motions. Her best frock, evidently, but nobody noticed. Except me. And I engaged her in conversation, because I had been too long idling in the shadows or sidelines, nursing a half drunk half a bitter in a dimpled glass. I sat one seat away in a whole row of otherwise empty seats, and set in motion my only chat-up line. Sorry, that sounds a bit of a crude expression, as I only wanted to bring a smile to her face, with no other intentions present in my mind. Ice-breaker is better than chat-up line. I might rewrite all this. But it is important to get it straight first-off, my frame of mind changing by the moment. All needs to be conveyed as part of what I initially called the Periwinkle Waterflower. Nothing can shift that, as I somehow believe myself to be the only one that survived the ice age that followed the planetary exodus ironically caused by constant invasive heatwaves. At least it is known that human life survived. Or at least whoever wrote this survived.
I look down as if into a mirror of lavender-tinged water and see, below it, seeming sheets of frozen freckles end to end, very twinkly with dimples and woken stars eager to become suns. And I smile at my own perverse misnomers simply written down to mislead you towards a denial that words and any who read them will inevitably vanish. And, like a newly launched galleon, I watch her sally forth, in blue, upon the universal dance floor of an even bluer sky. Large enough to allow mere mortals to see. Bless her heart.
(written today)
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