Happy Valentine’s day. Here’s a little flash fiction fable for you, my loves!
(my flash fiction fables are very short stories, approximately 300 words in length. If you prefer to listen, please access the recording above.)
That was it; she felt dry, empty, nothingness.
When she tried to squeak out a post, or the weekly newsletter, or even carry out a conversation under normal circumstances, it was nothing but boring stories.
Her eyeballs were confused by the rhythm of slow, daily life.
Her stomach felt a lurching sensation when she had to turn away from the screens, and consider something else to do.
What was she now then?
Was there anything left?
Had she shared so much of herself, given and emptied out to the extent that there was nothing else to give?
How could she fill up this void she had created? Or rather, how could she stop the void being stuffed with the ideas, lives and dreams of others? The shiny promises, the ‘business hacks’ the ‘life lessons’, the carefully curated and snippily soundtracked moments.
She had stitched herself into this picture, and found that her fabric was lacking substance.
But it was there wasn’t it? The substance?
She’d been promised a bottomless well, if she looked within.
Unfortunately in trying to learn how to do “looking within” better, she’d somehow lost where within really was. She was beginning to doubt that she had a “within”. Or at least that she had her own one.
Stop.
No, this isn’t it.
She had to stop listening to those ideas. She had to write herself some better ones.
She took a deep breath.
She closed every screen.
She shut her eyes.
It felt like an eternity.
But she continued to wait.
Ever so patiently.
And one by one, words came in.
She breathed gently, so as not to startle them.
And she welcomed each one with tenderness.
Not one was out of place; they all found a seat.