How Perfectly Creativity Shapes Our World, You Said
by Heather D Haigh
Your intense study of La Llorona—The Weeping Woman, should have shown me
more than your love of Zalce, but you had me with that opening line.
When your parents, historians both, pursed their lips at the daughter of a docker
courting their son—you a geneticist, me the product of local art college, your arm locked around my shoulders. "Beauty and talent is something this family appreciates. Supposedly."
And it's true, their halls boast regiments of paintings and prints, the library tastefully
dotted with sculptures. Your father owns several examples of Madonna and Child while
your mother favours Tanner's Generations.
Picasso was your true passion. Fragments of people—eyes, ears, fingers, toes,
chromosomes, ova, fallopian tubes.
How seamlessly we slid from his rose period—a circus of charts, tests and spread-
legged speculum performances, into the blues.
But periods aren't blue. They're scarlet, crimson and madder. Alizarin clotted dreams.
Picasso would soon move on to boldly coloured Lego blocks, while Ophelia,
perfectly captured by Millais, sinks into the river. The deep dark river.
Heather is a sight-impaired spoonie and emerging working-class writer from Yorkshire. Her work has been published by Fictive Dream, The Phare, Free Flash Fiction and others. She has won competitions with New Writers and Globe Soup and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Find her at https://haigh19c.wixsite.com/heatherbooknook
This story won Second Prize in the July 24 Monthly Micro Competition.