Whirlwind 2021

Whirlwind
~Davanee L.
~Davanee L. ~Davanee L.
Robins Egg Blue
By Delaney P.
It was hard to find a bench that was as well-loved as the one
that Miss May sat on. Yes, the paint was peeling at the edges and
the wood creaked as you sat down, but it was easily the brightest
thing in the park. The grass was once lush and green, but now it
was yellow and brittle. The tiny saplings that had been planted
by the grandfathers and grandmothers of the current generation
now seemed to touch the sky. However, the bench was still there,
reliable and untouched by time.
As far as anyone could remember, Miss May had always
sat there, just as she had always been a kindergarten teacher. She
sat on that bench as tulip bulbs were being planted, and she sat
on that bench while she watched birds weave their nests. She
especially loved the bright blue of robin’s eggs, and never left her
home without a teal scarf or cerulean pair of shoes.
She never let a speck of dirt remain on the bench, and
every week, she would scrub the wooden boards until they
positively shone. She painted the boards with new paint every
year, and even on the cloudiest, chilliest day, the sight of her
bench never failed to make her neighbors smile. Miss May grew
up on that bench, reading every book that she could get her hands
on, plowing through pages and pages of math equations, and
staring up at the constellations of a clear night sky.
While the bench hadn’t changed much throughout the
years, Miss May had. She now found it difficult to get out of bed
without her back and legs aching and walking to the park felt
longer than it used to. On a sunny, crisp morning, the neighbors
discovered that Miss May had begun to fade.
They would be talking to her, and they would only
be able to see her in the sunlight. The distinctive colors of her
clothing had become dull shades of black, grey, and off-white. On
cloudy days, they were only able to tell where she was by watching
for the swish of her skirt of the end of her scarf trailing behind
her.
It was a warm day when Miss May became impossible
to find. Her oldest students, now parents themselves, called her
name and looked all over town. The last place they searched
was the park. They were all dreading looking here, because they
knew it would mean that she wasn’t invisible anymore if she
wasn’t there. They knew that her time was coming, but they never
thought that this day would come so soon.
When they got there, they all fell silent. Her bench was freshly
painted, and the fallen leaves around the bench had been raked
into a neat pile. Later, they would wonder how this had happened-
Miss May hadn’t had the strength to paint in weeks, and all of her
neighbors had been too busy searching for her to paint her bench.
They couldn’t find a single paintbrush or rake, and the only thing
that they did discover was a single robin’s feather that lay on the
bench. Somewhere in the trees, unseen by any of the townspeople,
a robin flew into the sky, circled over the bench once more and
vanished out of sight.
The bench was still able to bring a smile to everyone in
town. Even in the winter, the vibrant blue paint peeked out from
underneath the snow. But now, a copper plate gleamed on the
back of the bench. Engraved on the plate was Miss May’s nameand
a sketch of a robin’s nest.
Inspired by this
Image found on
Creative Writing
Picture Prompts
24