Around the lounge she goes. Empty doorways and a vacant sofa for an audience. An eye to the tv. The handsome Spaniard, tightly trussed in black matador trousers streams into the room. A ray of sunlight in this top floor flat at 11am. The lesson begins. Alone, she dances a dance made for two.

A spring in her step, picking up the military beat. On the home front; fighting her own little war. She turns, she spins on the gleaming – polished to an-inch-of-its-life oak floor, gives the final few bars her all. Off balance – and into the sideboard she goes. The tiny Murano duck takes flight – soars into the air.

Don’t they say your life passes before you in moments such as this? They took a boat out of the lagoon to the glass blowers’ island of terracotta palaces set against a cobalt sky.

The tiny glass ornament, a mottled green, a memento from their honeymoon, swoops and soars. Down below are sparkling pools ripple in the woodgrain. With a skid and a whoosh of a water skier, they land together, unscathed – on the floor.

About Amanda Addison

Amanda Addison combines writing, making art and teaching. Inspired by the natural world, travel and textiles, long-listed for the Commonword and Virginia Prize, she holds an MA in Writing the Visual. She lectures at City College Norwich, Anglia Ruskin University and the Castle Museum Norwich. Amanda writes for adults and children. Her flash fiction short story, The English Way, was overall pan-European runner up in EACWP flash fiction 2019. Boundless Sky, Amanda’s picture book, tells the story of a bird flying halfway round the world looking for a place to nest, and a girl’s journey to a place of peace. Her most recent publication, for Ruskin Arts Publishing (Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge), Ways of Thinking, A portrait of your Grand parents, continues with the migration theme but focuses on using of personal photographs as a starting point for creative non-fiction.

• Web
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• More Posts(1)