Knights of MicroFiction

I thought I'd participate in this new monthly blog hop of Write. Skate. Dream.'s and Imagine Today's. It's a chance to do a little flash fiction writing and oil the gears of my imagination a little. Play along if you will :)

Write a Flash Fiction (MicroFiction) piece in 250 words or less about someone who's done something wrong but doesn't have the guts to apologize. Whether they end up apologizing or not is up to you.

Here's my entry:

Stupid, stupid, stupid… my face was burning. How could I be so stupid? I looked at the smoldering, melted mess that used to be my sister’s yoga mat. The smell of incense and burning plastic seared the back of my throat. And there’s the smoke alarm. Fantastic.

I hurried around the apartment opening windows and waving frantically at the smoke detector. Fandango, Aya’s preening Pomeranian, danced yapping about my feet, his wagging tail and sparkling eyes mocking me. At least he couldn’t talk… he couldn’t tell Aya what I’d done. “You just better keep your tiny little dog lips sealed, got it?” I threatened. Great. I’m threatening a Pomeranian. I sighed.

I gathered up the molten mess of mat and stuffed it into a trash bag from under the kitchen sink. I took one last look around the apartment, sniffing the air to make sure the burning smell was completely gone. Eh. Could be worse, I suppose. I’d better hurry up and get out of here before she comes home and catches me. Oh wait, the dog!

“Damn it Fandango, get back in your crate, you little monster!” I chased the gleeful pup around the kitchen island for the fifth time. “Gotcha!” Fandango screeched as I dived and grabbed him by the middle and shoved him in his crate. “Remember, I was never here!”

Yoga = revelations of a heroine

Don't ya just love it when you can clear your mind enough to actually hear your thoughts? It's been FOREVER since I attended a yoga class... like, try before Thanksgiving last year...

Photo credit: Lori Marois

and I've been a little under the weather, recently... and more sedentary than usual... I have been feeling the need for a good stretch. So I mustered my motivation and made myself go to the beginner yoga class at the studio down the street from me.

Oh the stretch. I ached for days after. But it was good aching... and I'll be going again tomorrow.

It's good for me to stretch my body and my mind. While I am doing yoga I try to focus on a couple of goals mentally (the poses and the teacher usually do enough for my physical stretching). First, I try to remember to breathe. That's hard for me! I get so tensed up, stressed about doing the pose correctly or about the creaking strain from my muscles uncurling... that I forget the basic concept of breathing... and the thing is that, if I can't remember to breathe, I surely can't quiet my mind...

Which is the second goal I focus on... a quiet mind... that can hear things that I need to hear instead of all the chatterings of anxiety and stress and "shoulds" that crowd in and cause me to forget to breathe :) (It's a vicious cycle, isn't it?). I don't think I usually accomplish either goal satisfactorily. Or at least I haven't yet... but if I don't go to yoga I don't make any progress at all... so going is good... and breathing is good... and then, during the shavasana (my favorite part, at the end) a thought popped into my head about my protagonist, my heroine... the thought that connected her to me in a way I had not considered before... I realized that I want to wake up and discover that I am a warrior, just as she does...

and now I'm ready to begin the first of many re-writes... I have a better understanding of what she needs to become who I want her to be.