End of the Month

Well Drabblers. I must confess this little blog was sorely neglected by myself this month. I started off with every intention of drabbling faithfully but life got in the way.

But you know what? That's ok. There's always next year. And you are of course welcome to join me then. See you in May 2016!!

Super Saturday Title

Hello Drabblers!

The title for this week is "Caught Unaware". 

Write away!

Super Saturday Title

Hello Drabblers!!

The title for this week is "The thing about you and me".

Enjoy writing!

The Cry Room

The bottles of tears line the shelves, rows upon rows. Filled to nearly overflowing. Collected over millennia, they stand as reminders of the human response to emotion.

Happy. Sad. Angry. As the tears flow, more bottles are filled and come down the line. The system organizes them with speed and efficiency. This is a warehouse, industrial, stern. No mood lighting. No gentle music.

But every once in a while, the sun will filter through the one window high up on the eastern wall and the light will catch the angle just right. And for a moment, there will be rainbows.

Super Saturday Title

My apologies, Drabblers. I completely forgot to post a title last night.

The title this week is "The Cry Room". Enjoy writing!!

Take the jump

It’s like that moment when you jump off the swings as a kid and you sail aloft for a moment. For the briefest stretch of time, you’re flying and anything is possible. You’ve worked and striven to achieve the momentum. Pumped your legs back and forth and back and forth until you reached the crest of the arc and you’re ready to jump.

Life is like that sometimes. You work and strive and you see the goal and you reach the crest and you jump. And for the briefest moment, you’re soaring and anything is possible.

Always take the jump.

Letters home

He held the pen in his hand, paper at the ready. The shelling had slowed as darkness fell and the light of the lantern shone like hope in the night. His thoughts roamed back to Thanksgiving dinner at the home table. Laughter and family and the table groaning under the weight of the feast. If he closed his eyes, he could see the faces of his dear ones gathered around.

“Incoming!” Someone yelled out from a few yards away. He ducked. The bomb made impact a few feet away. The dust settled slowly.

He put the pen to the paper.

The Children (a ¾ drabble)

Underneath the rubble, the children are climbing. Up from beneath the rocks they are climbing. Through crumbled school buildings, past the crushed remains of desks upon which they wrote their names. Out of their homes and playgrounds under fallen cities and mountains they climb, into twilight of murk and waste. Still higher. Above the clouds of dust taller than buildings. Higher than the cries of their mothers and fathers can reach. Higher to the sun.

Living in a Library

Her posture was perfectly shaped for book reading. Shoulders curved and bent over books that were lifted up to eager eyes, ready to wander over sculpted words twisted into life size characters and real places. Rows of thick and etched spines lined the rooms around her as each one had been read, cried over, and then looked for in real life. “It could never be” finales were shelved away on one side of memory and space. Because after all, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that a story beginning with “once upon a time” has to end with “happily ever after.”

Sunbreak

It is the best job and the worst job in the world. Every day, I bring the daylight. I am the hope each morning. I defeat the darkness.

But only in a way.

I also illuminate the darkness. I expose death, destruction, sorrow, pain. And there is no victory in this. They call it a sunbreak when I shine through the clouds with light shafts that look like divinity. In reality, I am hiding from the sorrow of this broken planet, seeking to shade my eyes as my own heart breaks.

I don’t know how much longer I can endure.

5.4 The American Dream

First we slept on mattresses in the porch, the sun waking us up and sending us out the door to the field. Working again and again like our father and grandfather before, each pursuing to make it better than before. Getting coins pressed in my hand over and over again until it became a bank account in my name. A college degree and hearing “good job.” A marriage license with a “Mrs.” and a birth certificate with “born to.” Driving a new car into the neighborhood and a house deed with my signature. But the house next door is bigger.

chiaroscuro

Sometimes things aren’t black and white, clearly demarcated and obvious. Sometimes, the choices we makes aren’t wrong or right. Sometimes, they’re just choices.

But the funny thing about choices is they set in motion a chain of events that rolls and churns beyond what we anticipated or imagined. And we end up on a path that may be exciting or terrifying or beautiful and sometimes all three at once.

We didn’t get here through right or wrong. We got here through choices that we made. Sometimes wise choices. Sometimes foolish choices. 

A step in one direction. An entire journey changed.

There is meaning. it  slips, behind chattering teeth, under my tongue. 

Lurks just beyond the periphery of the mind's eye. Taunting, shy, mocking with silence. 

It stalls, like the tug from the hand of a spoiled child. Not something to be left, light enough to drag, but too fragile. If pushed far or  hard, it will pack up, secretly, safely, darkly, and will be off. 

Like she dreamt of the circus. 

Living like a lover. Always clinging to the back of the skull,  a vampire. 

With teeth and the scraping, she tumbles at tantrums, 

wishing reality finding her true, discernible.

i = √ -1

Sometimes I’ve wondered what it would be like to be an optimist; occasionally I think I am. On those days when I can see the world like nobody else, when I find beauty in things the average person shuns; on those days I think I couldn’t be anything but an optimist: how else could I see the good side when others see only the bad?

But now I see that I did not find good, rather I challenged what I found banal. It is not positive to negate negativity. I can see the bad now, because that’s what I do.

The Trees Could Have Lived

She was head over heels for him, no question about that. It is not her fault that this was never going to happen. It is not her fault that the only idea she had about that situation was to write. So write him she did.

She wrote so many words. Line upon line. Page upon page. Pouring out her heart and soul. Begging for some response from him. You could have wallpapered Buckingham Palace with the letters she wrote to him. And the letters just kept coming. Day after day after day.

She could have just sent him a text.

5.2 A Daily Fight

A fortnight, that's how long I've daily fought. War had been declared as I only tried to do my job.
I had called in for back up and even with expert advice, the other side acted unexpectedly and many more were injured. I had to pull the battered and torn out from the Enemy's clutches. I camped out on the site, never repeating, always starting again as it seemed the only way to have the slightest victory. A small skirmish was won, before retreating back home. Finally, in surrender I gathered the remaining victorious pieces and left the Copy Room.

Friend

It’s such a strange thing. We were just two people walking along through life. I with my weirdness and you with yours and somehow our paths crossed and we decided our weirdness was mutually compatible.

Now I suppose we’re friends.

And yet I still can’t help looking back on the path and wondering what it was that made them converge. What extraordinary magic is this that sparks in two hearts at the same time, causing a mirror flame in each, drawing us both together?

Whatever it is, I’m glad it happened to you and me.

It’s less lonely with two.

Photograph

My brother and I built cities in the dirt under the swing set when we were children. We dragged the hose through the backyard, created waterways, built structures out of clay, and drove the matchbox cars on paved streets. Each day we would look forward to adding to our metropolis. We delighted when we woke to find the dirt covered in raindrop craters. Then we could rebuild and we knew each time would be better than before. If we left to play tag, the walls of our houses stood sturdy until we came back.

My mother never took a photograph.

It's just about May

Tomorrow it begins. The drabbling adventure that we all look forward to each year. Since today is Thursday, not only does this mark the inaugural thoughts for DrabDayMoMay 2015 but I also am providing you with the Super Saturday Title.

So, without further ado, the title for this Saturday. "The trees could have lived."

And with that, welcome to DrabDayMoMay. Write every day. Write once. Enjoy the stories.

- The Curator