Everyday Canvas

Showing to Tell--Exercises

Prompt: We are all guilty at times of telling instead of showing: I am going to give you some sentences that definitely tell, give me some examples of show, one or all of them. Whatever works for you. I am sure it will be interesting.

Her hair was a mess. I hate the smell of roses. He couldn't wait to see her again. You always change your mind. The moon is full.

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Her hair was a mess:

Her hair on the pillow was a huge clump into which a bird would have loved to nest. I felt inclined to snatch that clump and comb it into place, but I held myself, feeling mixed emotions about touching her as she slept. When she finally woke up, her first reaction was to grope her hair. Then she sat up rubbing her hand through her tangled tresses, and I held my breath, thinking surely some of those tangles could come undone and break off, but such a thing did not happen. Instead the locks, locked tightly into each other, twirled and fell on her shoulders while the unruly ones stuck upward as if they were on Medusa’s head.

“I need a shower,” she said, scratching into her scalp. Averting my eyes, I nodded, and without a word, left the room.


I hate the smell of roses

Why is it that some odors push and shove into my nostrils, instead of helping my soul to transcend? Take roses, for example. Heck, the smell of uncleansed toilets are better. Honestly, I’ve never known the thrill of enjoying such fake aromas, and there is a good reason for this.

“Wake up and smell the roses,” Mama used to tell me, supposedly to change my ways into hers. She didn’t succeed, and I ended up gagging at the smell of roses.

Ever since that fragrance has made me scrunch my face with disgust, even if I knew I should act as if I enjoyed it. So I usually had a little fun with those who thought rose water or anything smelling of roses was heavenly.

“Why, it smells as good as gasoline?” I would say. “Peel back the petals and you can run a car using them.” This usually made their facial expressions to shapeshift enough to put me down six feet deep.

He couldn't wait to see her again:

In the middle of the night, he awoke from his dreams of her into reality, to her image burned deeply in his mind. He sat up, looking at the night sky through the open window, and sighed when the stars reminded him of her eyes. He arose on shaky feet out of the bed and went to lean out of the window. The cold night air tingled inside him all the way to his lungs, forcing a chill to run straight down his spine.

He wondered if his heart could take this waiting, this constant longing, until the morning, although he knew there were less than five hours to the time when she would be back, as soon as her night shift at the hospital would be over.

You always change your mind.

Last night, at dinner, you ordered baked shrimp, then scolded the server for not bringing you your shrimp cocktail. You screamed so loudly at him that the management made us leave the restaurant, and our evening was destroyed…once more.

What were you trying to prove… to me…to yourself…again? What is that something that makes you act like the ugly graffiti on the walls? Do you always look at the same things with fresh eyes or are these constant conversions show the butterfly in you trying to emerge from its cocoon?

Maybe it is your levels of perception that go askew all of a sudden; maybe it is you being so forgetful that you don’t recall what you agreed to. I should have known this about you the first time when you said no to the minister who was there to marry us. Several ministers and receptions later, your father had to slap you into saying yes. Now, after us moving from town to town and from one house to another, you are still searching for a new place, but the baked shrimp thing last night was the last draw. I now feel like I want to leave you, but then, I think I’ll stay until your next shot of murder at my joy.

The moon is full.

I watch the ivory ball in the night sky in awe and feel soaked in its power. As it rises, it pulls me to itself, reminding me how fragile I am and how easily I can be pulled, for I am a nocturnal thing, so imperfect, and excitedly, I ask, “Why?” Yet, the moon is stubbornly silent as it always has been; except its glimmer is chasing away the strange clouds of fine dust around it.

Encouraged, I raise my chin at its shimmering beams and howl. Then, the last thing I remember is my confused neighbor, hanging from his window and waving his arms at me.