Feeling chuffed to bits that I’m the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Slam Story winner. Some of the Uni of Gloucestershire students had been auditioned to take part in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival’s Story Slam, alongside some local authors and well known performance poets. The idea is to write and read your own piece of flash fiction, three minutes worth, before the whistle blows and you’re kicked off the stage.
It was a really great,fun night and I felt honoured to be crowned flash fiction champion! Here’s one of winning pieces:
Fight for Love
I saw you in the supermarket standing at the end of the aisle. I waited a while, just looking, wondering if you’d notice me. Your baldness glowing under the fluorescent light, inviting me to come closer. My chest felt so tight.
No doubt you’ve had this effect on other women like me; full of anxiety, looking for someone heavenly to snuggle in front of the TV. Someone who couldn’t care if I’ve brushed my hair, concealed my spots with Boots No7, or what I wear. Someone who loves that spare tyre, or two, which peek out between my thin black leggings and the mohair blue jumper which shrank in a hot wash.
I move a little closer. Someone else has their hand on you, looking at you, their eyes full. The tip of their tongue rests on the edge of their mouth anticipating your attention. My pulse races, I can’t mention what else I feel as I reveal my hatred for this interloper, this groper of dreams, this killer of what seems to be my future.
The photograph in the paper did me proud. Yes, I was arrested, but the crowd cheered as I left the store, and more importantly after the fight, the screaming and begging, she had no leg left to stand on, not after I’d finished, not much hair either, but it didn’t mither me, because, I had you.
155 grams of Tesco’s finest Belgian dark chocolate egg.
Claire Harrison - Writer 
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