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Writing prompts, white blood spatter

White Blood Spatter of the Pure

White Blood Spatter of the Pure and River of Light

A leaf is a leaf, right?

The rainwater splattered on it, in crystal drops, is just that. And then, as you keep looking at it , it transforms. Becomes something else, a river of white blood belonging to the Pure, those devoid of flesh, a milky-white blood spatter on green fields.

I sat down to look at my writing prompt today, a snap taken when on vacation a long time ago, drops of water rolling about, glinting in the sun, as a huge palm leaf waved ever so light in the breeze. And now I have a story about the Pure, their lives, their wants and griefs, and their greatest tragedy, an inability to die, a continuation of decrepitude, an absence of renewal.

Not sure where it comes from, maybe from Ali Smith’s story I read last night, ” God’s Gift” which ends like this:

” In a moment I will go upstairs and see if the fledgeling is still on the glove on the window sill. If I can see a bird still there, the it’s probably dead. if I can’t see a bird on the sill, then it’s probably alive. but it might have fallen off, or been blown off. What if it fell off? It might have fallen the height of the house and be stunned or killed on the ground below.

If there is no bird on the sill what I will do is this. I will go to the window and lean out. I will look down, and it will be there. Or I will look down and it will be gone.

It will be dead.

It will have flown.”

Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

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