Flowing Words

My creative writing class last spring was a wonderful gift. It was full of creativity-inducing assignments that pushed my mind. This assignment was called "page flipping" and I highly recommend it to anyone who is writer's blocked. Take a book and flip through the pages quickly, at the same time writing a list of any words that pop out at you. Do it fast enough that you can't actually read any phrases or think about the words you choose as you're flipping. When you're done, pick several words from the list you made and write something using them. Or, read the list and simply write about whatever it makes you think of. That's how this short piece of prose got written.

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Flowing Words

He was unresponsive, words escaping his lips and sailing through the air, dropping like crumbs upon the table laden with his fingerprints. It was the same as always, the lilt of his voice coming and going like waves in the sea. The words were everywhere, plummeting over the ledge of his tongue, hanging helplessly suspended in the black strands of his hair, sliding down the curve of his belly. They were astonishingly appropriate and instinctively accidental all at once, like improvised music. Then, suddenly, a forbidden word in the mix: “You!”

It stops like damned water. I know he is right.