Her fingers were glued tight by their tips. She flexed them, bending her knuckles in delight at the surreal surrender of her body to the glue’s invisible force. They looked, to her, something like a sea creature.
The glue stuck finger to finger and paper to desk, and fake flower to wire. She eyed the mess, seeing within it, the perfectly arranged decoration; a design of her own. Perfectly, and precisely glued together. Her stomach sparkled with relief and satisfaction.
Teal, almost turquoise, flowers, fake, arranged in a pleasing aesthetic, glued with great guile to a delicate hairpin. She had imagined it would look all wrong, garish and guilty with bad taste, but she was delighted with how right it seemed. She glanced over the rest of her work; three more to make.
They were hair decorations for the delirious and darling bridesmaids; tiny girls all excitement over dresses and delicious desserts. She thanked the heavens she was spared the turquoise frills. It was retro she was advised, she acquiesced, although she was certain that no one had ever liked turquoise.
She smiled, it didn’t matter. The wedding was miraculous, nothing could mess with that. Gone forty, her friend, and finally she had found him, her family, her forever. It was hard not to take heart from it, to feel the frenzied joy. It gave her hope for herself; hope for her own him, on a horizon not yet seen.
But in that hope, there was a lonely hollow where unhappiness hid. She startled, stung by the surprise of the fall, and her stomach hung heavy with the solitude she solicited. It would pass, as it always did. So she would wait here, for hope to take hold again.
During the Covid outbreak my writing teacher is challenging us to create a piece of writing based on a set of three specific words. This piece is based on the words: pin, turquoise, glue.
Unstuck Monsters 