Six Sentence Stories: The Ape that could Heal

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Revell Endangered Animals. 1974. US.

Greetings, vintage mates. Today I’m linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and the cue word today is Claim.

The Ape That Could Heal

In the mirror you see the ape, black and white, a monochrome beast of healing, standing behind you and claiming your bathroom as his consulting room.

You prey he might help strip away your grief; the daily spooking performed by ghosts who arrive as regular as commuters, subway trains, and parcelled-up self-healing books from Amazon which you always finish with disappointment.

“Wash away your pain,” says the ape, his black-olive eyes primordial, sad, gentle, elemental and kind.

You wash and you scrub and you clean and erase the sticky pain which had set itself deep inside your pores, like shellac filling the grain of mahogany tables you have no desire to ever sit at, and where patina seals over all that mattered back then, when you were young and terrified, shivering below a desk in the biology lab, while all around you lay the bodies of classmates.

Says the ape, “Keep scrubbing, and peel back those layers until you see yourself grinning, just like me…”

And all at once, the ape arches his lips and gives the most exquisite and comical grin you have ever seen, and one that causes you to reciprocate; and only then do you find, in your reflection in the mirror, you are monochrome – black and white, just like he – the ape that claimed your bathroom as a consulting room, and helped heal you with ablutions and grinning teeth.

Thank you for healing with us 🙂

14 thoughts on “Six Sentence Stories: The Ape that could Heal”

  6. Dude!*
    Welcome to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

    Fun Six, yo

    *compliment on a post the reads with the enjoyment of an attic-old cardboard box of full of papers and folders and things that lost their categories as age organized the world around us

    Liked by 1 person

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  7. The six sentence discipline (or anything in that context) creates a curious synergy between being spartan and meaningful in a sentence.
    And to quote my so dear Alan Watts:
    “What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now.
    …in the same way a wave is something the ocean is doing.
    The real you is not a puppet life pushes around .
    The real,deep down you, is the universe.”

    Liked by 3 people

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