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Writer's pictureMarley Betts

The Sitter - A writing exercise

Capturing a moment. Following the thoughts. Unedited. Fun times.


The view from a living room couch showing trees through the window and ordinary living room objects. A purple couch sits in the sunlight.

Facing the window, she sits, looking at the mist lingering between trees in her line of sight. Sunlight streams in through the window and lands on the floor, missing any part of her body, warming only wood, fabric, varnish, and some plasticky sort of rug. She looks up through the grimy window and notices the torn flyscreen, useless to do the job for which it has been made. Its only purpose now, is to further obstruct her view.


She can see toys on the ground, a book, a stray pillow, a plastic bag. Remnants of her children as they go about their day out of the home while she awaits their return, wasting time with useless words and watching the sun from the shade, wishing to feel its warmth.


She becomes aware of the feeling of her clothing on her skin, the weight of the blanket on her body, the glasses on her nose, and the hairs and threads gleaming in the sunlight on the empty couch across the room. Space for the absent children. She wonders what they are doing as she wriggles her feet and scratches her head, aware of things that she should be doing. Instead, she strikes keys with her fingers and breathes the air in her house, while the weight of her body presses into the couch through her buttocks.


Her nails are uneven. Some are rough, some longer than others, one missing a corner. They need to be trimmed. So do her toenails. She thinks about toenails and how gross it must be to read anything too lengthy written about them, only a brief observation of their existence is acceptable, nobody wants to acknowledge how dirty they get underneath, all stinky and fluffy. Toenails are disgusting. She wrinkles her nose at the thought of a foot fetish and wonders how her mind turned to thoughts of feet.


Refocus on the trees through the window. Bright green leaves droop and wave towards the ground while red stems connect them to brown branches and blackened trunk. The top of the tree can send messages into the ground. Electrical signals. Water. Nutrients. Trees speak to Mother Earth, and bugs, and give off pheromones that travel through the air and communicate with others that never even make a physical connection. She read a book about that once, and she writes words about how she read a book about it once as she gets stuck in a thought loop.


She brushes a hair off the keyboard and scratches her eye. How did the hair get there? From her head? Another person's head? Did it float through the air like the tree pheromones, or drop from the sleeve of her jacket?


Moments and thoughts are messy and neverending, and she thinks about how words don't seem to do them justice.


What can you see in your moment? Where does your brain take you?


Much love,

Marley x


P.S. I write books. Find them HERE

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