Paul, I call upon the natural elements present, the ancestors of the traditional owners and all our friends and family with us today, to hear the raw honesty of my vow to you:

Darling, my friend, my desire; consider this a star chart that you may seek sail from at any time.

I love you stars and moons and will until I embrace the end of our immense universe.

You are my light and my darkness, my breeze and my cyclone, my ocean and my land, my storm and my rainbow: what better balance of nature could I hope for.
I give to you something that I have never given to anyone else: my true self, alone and adrift on the single, set, cell of a map, never to be investigated by anyone else.

This is the least and the most that I have to give to you. Nobody has ever discovered this place before and I have worked hard to keep it protected from the pirates of life.

I PROMISE that I will let you in to my most private quarter: the Captain's Cabin that is sacrosanct to all but the solitary salty dog seeking a palace of peace from a weather beaten existence. You are the only sailor ever allowed into my space: my fellow captain.

Even when my cabin walls are reinforced with cemented silence and cyclone bolts, I will call on the elements to tear them down and assault me with the terrifying rage of knowing there's nowhere to hide. I will see your image and allow you to remind me.

Forever more I seek my shelter in your wind of change. I will turn my face to the stinging salt spray that puffs my eyes and sniffs into my soul. I will stand up, strong, against the craggy, barren, wind swept, lonely horizon in the distance that has become so familiar to me that I have over identified with it and consciously become it: distant and solitary. Its comfort even seduces me now: show nothing, protect your inner self, beware of the rocks and go further out to sea, no one must enter. This pain of change, this song of the sea meets land, will be our rainbow.

I feel vulnerable sharing my inner thoughts. I will feel exposed when I begin to verse you of my intense fear, yet malnourished bravery, in allowing you into my most private space. I ask of you gentle reminders and acceptance of my truth as the gang plank away from the rocking ship and back toward the rain bowed horizon that encompasses people. However vulnerable I feel, you, Paul, are welcome in my space.

This is my promise to you.

Now can I have some Mungalli Cheese cake? They look bloody delicious!


If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.

Round the wheel went, wobbly like. Round, crocked-round, wobble, pliff-bonk! It gave way under her weight.

She looked at him through her fat slits of eyes. "Idiot," she howled, not under her breath quietly.

He looked at her. "Fat pig," he murmured under his breath so Mum wouldn't hear and fat girl wouldn't hit him from here to China.

Mum heard him. Fair dinkum, she could hear a mandarin being peeled in the bathroom - with the door closed!

"Simon! Come here. Now." Her voice had the angry tone. He was in trouble again. I agree with fat Jackie for once. He is an idiot! If he just thought the truth about Jackie, without ever saying it, he wouldn't be in trouble from Mum all the time. I guess being one year younger than my twelve years meant he hadn’t yet learnt that you just think some things and NEVER say them aloud.

Simon walked slowly and stupidly toward the verandah to get his punishment over and done with. Within minutes, he sidled back to us as if he'd had a good wallop across his skinny little behind.

"What'd Mum do this time Simple Simon? You're such an idiot. You shouldn't even push Jackie in that old pram. She's so fat that the tyres were never going to hold her."

"Shut up Melissa. You're the idiot. Take Jackie home before I bash her face in. I hate the fat pig."

Jackie jumped out of the lopsided pram and loped to the clothesline. She tried to monkey up the straight stick bit, but it buckled under her weight like it was a banana tree. I couldn't hold my laughter back. It was so funny. Mum heard me laughing. She came storming out to clip me under the ear for laughing at Jackie but when she saw the bendy clothesline, she screamed instead.

"Oh no! Which one of you little monsters broke my new clothesline?"

Simon and I pointed straight at Jackie. It was usually Simon that dobbed on her and got into trouble for tiddle tattling, but this time I was going to stick up for him. It was about time that Jackie got in trouble for her naughty ways.

For once Mum believed us. She looked us up and down, and then looked Jackie up and down. Jackie was three times the size of us and three years younger than my little brother Simon.

"Jackie An-oly!" Mum barked scarily through dog looking fangs that showed when she was savage. "Go home at once!"

Simon snickered under his breath, "Serves you right."

Lucky for Simon, the bent clothesline was cemented into the ground. If it wasn't he would have had to pooh it out because Mum would surely have rammed it down his throat.

Mum was thunder. She roared into the house and started vacuuming. Mum only did housework when she was furious. We liked it because it meant Mum was too busy to get into us for getting into Jackie.

I looked at Jackie, still sitting at the bottom of the clothesline. "You've done it this time Jack. Mum won't let you come here any more."

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," Simon followed me up with.

The vacuum cleaner had stopped just one second before Simon spoke his truth. He didn't have time to shut his mouth. It was too late. Mum overheard him call fat Jack bad rubbish and she screeched for Simon.

Simon ran for his life, way down the back garden, over the fence and disappeared into the An-oly's yard.

Jackie purred and smirked; pointing toward the spot where Simon disappeared. Unable to hide her glee, she fell on the ground in fits of laughter.

"I detest you," I thought to myself. "How could one kid be so naughty but get everyone else into so much trouble." I knew better than to speak my thoughts aloud. I leant a long time ago that if I controlled my face then nobody could read my thoughts. That way I could think bad things about our neighbour and not get into trouble for it. Simon though, he was a slow learner. He thought he could whisper and get away with it. He was so keen to make sure Jackie knew we loathed her that he just had to say it loud enough for her to hear. Like I said before, Mum could hear a mandarin being peeled so Simon needed to learn my strategy of control.

By the sound of the snarling over the fence, Simon was bailed up by the An-oly's three Dobermans. He’d have to move fast to jump the side fence and get to safety – away from Mr. An-oly and his dogs. The whole An-oly family was fat and nasty, the dogs too, and nobody liked the An-olys or their vicious snarly pets. Mum said she felt sorry for little Jackie and we had to be nice to the little beast. According to Mum, Jackie’s dad was a wife-bashing loser and her Mum was a good housekeeper so that Mr. An-oly could be a loser in clean comfort. Mum swore to God that if we did anything mean to poor little Jackie that she'd feed us to the Dobermans herself.

So, we never touched her. I never said unkind words, just thought them and poor old Simon hadn't quiet worked out how to be horrible nicely.

Still rolling around cacking her fat little heart out, Jackie hadn't noticed our dog's freshly dropped dodo right near her head.

"Onya Poley," I thought to myself, "You're a good dog for doing your business right there."

It was only a moment before dear little Jackie steam rolled Poley's pile of pooh into sticky pikelet batter. It stuck to her hair, her face, but best of all it got into the laughing hole above her fat rolled chin.

The site of Jackie An-oly's head covered in doggy dodo was too much for my thoughts only strategy. Giggling uncontrollably, I hoofed it as fast and as far as I could and left Mum with only one kid to growl at: Jackanoly rolly poley.


If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.