Read my #Flash Fiction entry: You are a button. (Include the words, red, mango, goat and worm)

Thanks to my brilliant writer friend Lisa M Stull for hosting a fun #Saturday Flash Fiction challenge; you can check out her fabulous, witty and entertaining blog at http://lmstull.com/.

Here is one that I wrote for her challenge, 'You are a button'. I wanted it to be really experimental and loved the idea of writing in a dialect / vernacular to try and get a real sense of character and place. (The challenge was less than 500 words and had to include the words; red, goat, mango and worm.)

One of the things I love both about reading and writing, is that it allows you to see through somebody elses eyes in the most personal of ways; the idea of an imagined experience becoming part of your own internal history.

My idea was that the button would be witness to a woman's life over time and would form a sort of metaphor for her own state at each stage of her womanhood.

Shiny Red Button o'mine.

Hmmm, Hmmm! Me loves it when da sun is SHINING! Iyes gets to go out and have a look at all the lovely tings. Life is a little dull sometimes, sittin in dat wardrobe, waiting for da winter to pass on by; taking ‘is time and then – Bam - sunshine 'ere we come, and liddle old shiny, red me, gets to walk about on mi lady’s sundress - Da one wit the Mango fruit on, reminding me of home.
There was a time, Iyes would’ve danced my liddle cotton thread off, jiggling my liddle plastic roundness off, flashing my shininess off at a passing toggle – but times de change and Iyes be tired now - faded like them Mangos.

More and more Iyes clinging on to that button hole, and it’s such a strain these days as mi lady’s bosom expands with age and love; she was just a missy when Iyes first knows her and now look at her, a grandmamma; all soft and rounded like miself.

But, Oh mi lawdy, dose grandchildren of hers, theys don’t half put out energy. Only the other day, Iyes be sitting calm, watching the goat in the yard takin a piece of ol’ Jasper’s cottons off da line, and one comes leaping up on their grandmamma’s knee, holding out the biggest worm you ever did see. Oh mi lawdy, it didn’t half send me button threads a shiverin. Iyes getting too old for all dat silliness.

It’s hard, bein da only button on da dress, ‘oldin it all together on yers own, stopping mi lady from exposing herself, keepin’ the dignity goin through old age. But I swears if Iyes have to put up wid those grandchildren pulling me about, Iyes might just give in and let miself fall.

It might be quite nice to spend da rest of mi dayz down da back da sofa, in da quiet and da calm.

Ahhh, but for now, Iyes gonna have a liddle snooze in the sun, let it all hang loose.