Help me produce a micro-fiction. A short love story.  

Boy meets girl. He loves her happily ever after.  

No, this isn’t what I had in mind. It was a sad ending.  

It was a story of boy meets girl. They giggled, danced, loved. Hearts shattered.  

Boy meets girl is a cliche. Make it unconventional. Unconventional but genuine. Add details. Make the boy a character like Nick Wilde the fox from Zootopia, or the Timothee Chalamet version of Wonka.  

Arriving late to a dance class, a pottery workshop, or a philosophy exam he hadn’t prepared for, he sat next to someone with beautiful, large hands. She could be a model, he thought, but maybe not a hand model. A few days later, he got caught sneaking into the theatre without purchasing a ticket. She had happened to be working that shift, and had also happened to have a soft spot for skinny skeleton boys with fluffy ferret hair.  

It was raining that night when she trudged out of the theatre with an empty tote bag in her hand. Her house keys, her phone and her chocolate flavoured lip balm had mysteriously vanished from her staffroom locker. She hated the rain. He called out to her from across the street, waving and holding an umbrella that looked very much like her’s. No way, she laughed what a coincidence. However he was a self-proclaimed romantic, and he declared it as fate. It was a humid summer, he told her, and it was simply raining coincidences.  

That’s too many words for a micro-fiction. Stick to only a few sentences. Now let’s add characterisation and narrate iteratively. Make it light-hearted. Like a rom-com.  
 

He studied all kinds of different methods to tease out her laughter, and with every success he’d proudly produce this ridiculous grin on his face. After some time, she realised that she often laughed just to see that grin of his.  

Getting warmer, I think. Now describe the emotional bond between the two characters.  
 

She permitted him to peer into her inner world. Her every thought and every feeling became an extension of his own. He experienced love, understanding, empathy. Their individual worlds occupied the same space, a superposition of identities that resonated together.  
 

Show don’t tell. How about some imagery? I want to feel warmth and intimacy. Make it sensual, but not explicit. I’m still uncomfortable with writing sex or nudity.  

As they slept, her hands, sturdy and swollen with silver rings, intertwined with his. Her sweet whispered breaths caressed his cheeks and tickled a melody that swirled inside his ears. Her warmth became a part his own. Then, they woke up.  

I like that, the last sentence feels powerful. Now, narrate a singulative conflict in this story, focalise on the girl internally. Something like Marriage Story or Madame Bovary. Foreshadow infidelity.  

The next time she stayed over at his place, she saw a single, unfamiliar hair clinging to his silk threaded pillowcase. She noticed a new toothbrush at the bathroom sink. She dared not to ask.  

Getting colder. That’s not what happened. Repeat the scene. It was the girl who was at fault.  

The next time she stayed over at his place, she closed the balcony door behind her to take a phone call in the winter breeze outside. It was raining. Later, she placed her phone face down on the night stand before going to bed. He dared not to ask.  

Write a scene in the present instance.  

In between moments of closure, she stares into the distance that is the floral pattern engraved into her ceiling. The trigger could just be a word, something like dopey, dick, or maybe lip balm. She thinks about where he’s at now, he’s always writing at his desk. She thinks about the sound of his long, boney fingers tapping against the keyboard. Who is he writing about this time?  

Focalise on the character of the boy internally.  

In between moments of rumination, he stares at the keyboard at his desk from behind a cloud. Is it just writer’s block, or is it something else? He needs a trigger. It could just be a word, something like bubbly, bipolar or maybe lip balm. But boy meets girl is a cliche. Who is he writing about this time?  

Getting a bit too warm. Let’s try something else. Focalise on the boy in this scene through what the girl sees: she enters his room to collect the items that she had left at his place.  

Her eyes roam around his room, drifting from the movie posters that plastered one wall and lingering on the shirts inside the laundry basket that she’d shamelessly borrowed and worn. Then her gaze settled on top of his desk, a jumble of books, laptop and lotions. He leaps over to slam the laptop shut.
 

A familiar burst of laughter escapes her frown. She has already seen who he’s writing about, and she’s seen him typing out prompts on a machine to produce these stories of their short love. It’s a genuine laugh, a genuine laugh that turns into genuine tears and then into genuine sobs. He is fucking ridiculous.  

He looks as if he’s about to hug her, or even something more. Instead, he unravels her swollen sausage fingers to place the strap of a tote bag into her palm, it’s the belongings that he had packed away. He tries say something funny before she leaves. Her eyes turn away.  

Warmer than the fires of hell. But the narrative is becoming too complicated. I want something simple and short, it has to feel authentic. Let’s write with genuine human emotions and change the narrator to be a character in the story. Just like the relationship, I want the story to finish with closure. Something that readers will think as bittersweet.  

The door slams shut. Was that the last thing I’ll ever say to her? I always try to say something that’s funny, instead of something that’s genuine. Why? It’s easy to hide behind layers of irony. It’s hard to be authentic.  

Why did I start telling this story in the first place? I take a deep breath in. I place my hands on top of the keyboard. Am I’m still wearing her silver rings? 

I feel the ghostly touch of her oversized fingers outlining over mine. I exhale, and submerge my hands underneath the warmth of summer rain, feeling the flow of another soul’s words, sentences, paragraphs.  

Writing is a practice in empathy, and empathy is a practice in love. As I continue to write, I continue to love. We are different entities, but in this instance we resonate as one.  

Now, I ask the character, the narrator and the writer:  

Help me produce a micro-fiction. A short love story.  

Boy meets girl. He loves her happily ever after.