Creative Writing Class

For just an hour a week, a small group of women come along to write and to share their thoughts with each other. Steaming cups of tea and baked treats in hand, pencils poised, students recently wrote about objects hidden in paper bags.

A nectarine

Firm to the touch, the nectarine isn't ripe yet. I run my hands over the smooth surface, curved like breasts, until I come to the tip. My fingers touch a rough, broken shoot, where it was connected to a tree growing in the sunshine. I can imagine myself lying under that tree and stretching my hands out through the green grass to reach for another fruit that's fallen from a low-lying branch. This one is soft and ripe to the touch. Its flesh has been pricked by birds and eaten by possums, I imagine. My fingertips trace its outline, getting sticky from the exposed flesh. Anonymous

HB pencil

This could be my art class pencil. It is as I remember it from primary school. The rubber in the end is for soaking up mistakes, re-doing shapes and lines, shading to do over again, more perfect or to my liking. We used to chew these tips of rubber, and the boys would throw them at us from across the classroom. Anonymous