The Object of My Affection

Thought I'd muster up the courage to share this with you: one of my pieces I've been working on for the Bring Yourself creative writing course.  I'm in week 3 and it has been really great, reading other people's work and being provided with insight and inspiration from other writers.  This is just a short piece, still in the draft stage.  We were prompted to consider, in detail, an object that had great significance for us.  I immediately knew.  My piece is actually about two of the same object, fused into one.  Here goes:

The Object of My Affection

Here lies a bruised and battered body.

Outstretched on the carpet, with her shadow distorted by lights in opposition, she rests.  Her neck, decorated with steel and mother of pearl now lies free from my constraints and her torso, the colour of burnt pumpkin and bark, defined by one thin line of black, now basks in silent freedom.

Her navel is adorned with a ring of wooden diamonds in shades of toffee and charcoal.  They encircle the nucleus in perfect symmetry, drawing the eye to her most prominent feature: the ebony birthmark on the right of her ribcage.  It is the shape of a magnified teardrop, and glints in the sunlight just the same.  It caresses her skin and protects her.  From me.  

But I still broke her.

We were on the road then, undertaking our own odyssey in distant lands, testing our palates, deciphering unfamiliar constellations, swimming in foreign seas.   And she stayed with me, over every boundary line we crossed and barrier we broke, she rode with me - resilient.  She gave a unifying language to our chance encounters and fostered our infant friendships.  

I should have taken more care.  

Before all that though, before the constant moving and thirst for the unknown, before the chosen homelessness and freedom, she gave me a release.  Back then, when I first began to hear the world spitting its insults and insecurities, its contradictions and competitiveness, she allowed me to hold her, and she held me back.  She let me take my miseries out on her alone, well hidden from the eyes and words of others.  Those intimate conversations I will never forget.  

But I took it all for granted.

She is scarred now.  She fell and I wasn’t there to catch her.  She: the one who never faulted in our friendship and always allowed me the outlet of self expression, who listened to my screams and whispers, my early attempts at poetry and confessions about love, who let me both beat and caress her and didn’t flinch at either touch, fell from a height great enough to break her back bone, tear her flesh and make her weak.  And it was I who injured her.  

She will never recover completely.

Yet here she lies, before me now.   Still waiting.  Still listening.  Still allowing me to take her into my grasp and spill forth the contents of my mind, however disorganised and distorted they may be.  Still granting me her expertise and patience, and the permission to manipulate her, in order that I may attempt to express what it is to be me.  Still fighting time’s efforts to strip her of colour, steal her strength and render her unreliable.

Here lies the instrument of my growth.

The object of my affection.

My guitar.

xo