#1

Prompt #1: Close your eyes briefly. Think of one object that’s in the room and focus on it. Without opening your eyes, recall as much detail as you can about it. After three minutes or so, open your eyes and write about that object without looking at it.

There’s a little square table in the corner of the dining room. The wood is dark cherry red and it’s quite pretty, or, it would be, if it wasn’t absolutely ancient and the surface wasn’t warped. That was rude. I shouldn’t say that about the table; it would give you the wrong impression. Really, it’s a lovely table. I’m just being rude to it because I feel like being rude, and it’s very easy to be rude to inanimate objects because they can’t be rude back to you. Usually. If they do, there’s a problem. But I’m in my right mind tonight, or at least I must be, because the table isn’t being rude back.

I don’t really know where it came from, honestly. I want to say it was Aunt Leila’s, but that might be wrong. It might have been here when we got the house. Though, come to think of it, I doubt that, too, because I don’t see it in my mind when I think back to my early childhood memories. Then again, my early childhood memories aren’t exactly the most reliable source. That section of my mind is sort of my Wikipedia section: subject to convey one perfectly normal piece of information one day, and studded with imagined alien visits the next. Does that make sense? I don’t care. It did to me.

The table is very dusty because no one ever dusts the furniture because that’s usually my job and I’m exceedingly bad at it. I usually blow off tasks my parents give me. I probably shouldn’t, but I do, and I honestly don’t have much of a reason why I do it. We all rebel against something or other in some way or another. But, since I can’t stand in front of tanks in Tienanmen Square, I’ll stick with not dusting my parent’s furniture. At least while I’m still sixteen. All bets are off when I’m old enough to get out of this tiny town.

On the table are various objects: vases, a statue, some computer cables. The statue was Leila’s (this one I’m only slightly more sure of than the table itself), and the vase may have been, too. The computer cables are mine because I’m quite disorganized and like to leave my junk out where unsuspecting passersby can stumble over them, such as on an ancient, dusty table in the corner of the living room that no one really cares about, anyway.