The Grape on the Floor

by Jean Kavich Bloom

Honestly, I was listening to the day's leader talking about psalms with our church writers' group, but I was also a bit distracted. We were all sitting at a circle of tables in a classroom, and in the middle of the floor, right in front of me, was a lone, green grape. I assumed it had been dropped by someone in the class that always meets in there just before we do, the class that always has goodies to keep them, I guess, fortified while they study the Word. 

But it looked so lonely, that grape. 

To get my mind off it, and because I do odd things, I wrote at the top of a blank piece of paper, “The Grape on the Floor.”

The fellow writer next to me saw it. Later she said, “You’re going to write about that grape on the floor, aren’t you?”

Yes. Yes, I am. Because, you know, what was going to happen to that perfectly good (except for, you know, being on the floor) grape?

Would someone pick it up, wash it off, and eat it?

Would someone pick it up and just throw it away?

Would it be kicked around and end up in the hallway somewhere—or even down in the kids’ wing of the church before anyone else noticed it?

Would it be tragically squished by an inconsiderate and oblivious human foot before it had a chance to somehow save itself?

Didn’t anybody care about that grape? Did it miss its bunch?

Okay, it was just a grape, and I later left the room without giving it much more thought. I would have had to move a table or (gasp) crawl under one to get the grape myself, and I knew the cleaning crew would soon be there. (I could find a lesson in that too. Leaving a problem for someone else to deal with?) But my point is that imagination can take us fiction writers so many places if we just let those brain cells fly.

             What (or who) do you see “out of place”?

Why do you suppose it (or that person) is “out of place”?

How did it (or that person) get there?

What will happen to it (or that person)?

Who will care? Will anyone care?

If you see a “grape” that intrigues you, take a moment to do the odd thing. Write down what you saw. Who knows? What you saw might lead to some fruit of your own. 

Jean Kavich Bloom is a freelance editor and writer for Christian publishers and ministries (Bloom in Words Editorial Services), with more than thirty years of experience in the book publishing world. Her personal blog is Bloom in Words too, where she has posted articles about the writing life. She is also a regular contributor to The Glorious Table, a blog for women of all ages. Her published books are Bible Promises for God's Precious Princess and Bible Promises for God's Treasured Boy. She and her husband, Cal, live in central Indiana. They have three children (plus two who married in) and five grandchildren.

photo credit: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=35481&picture=bunch-of-grapes