“Suit”: Inktober Day #2, Writer Edition

I’m using Inktober prompts to generate daily writing

Photo by Erik Dungan on Unsplash

I’m always jealous of my visual artist friends, especially my sister, when Inktober rolls around. Then this year I realized that even though I don’t draw, I do write, and it might be fun to take the same prompts and see what twenty minutes of writing on the given topic elicits. So I thought I’d just play and see where things take me (knowing that a lot of what I write will be dreck), and maybe you’d like to join too. Here are this year’s prompts.

The seat is pilled and covered in dirt; brown where it once was a bright tomato red. The torso is longer than it should be, overstretched in some places, but only when she isn’t crammed herself into it; then the rainbow spans, unblemished, across her proud chest. But she won’t wear it again, this I know as fact, because the leaves are falling and geese shriek over the house every morning, frantically flapping into their lopsided V. She doesn’t remember about winter, not really — it’s an abstract concept at best, snowflakes and mittens, hot chocolate — and she certainly has no idea that it means she won’t be swimming any time soon. She would be furious to see my hands hovering over the giveaway box. Really, it’s not even fit for giving away; anyone in their right mind would look at it and say it’s a rag. But I hold it a little longer away from myself, and try to see it for what it really looks like; then bring it to my nose, and breathe in, as if I can catch the last bit of what she was, only two weeks ago, and what she will never be again.