“I think, that when I look at the night, I can see something still so mesmerizing of color as the day. I can see nothing missing in detail, never deprived of either vividness nor shape. A flawless form; though, dead with the teardrops that fell, while in desperation, attempting to raise a garden from a small root.”
Continue reading Excerpt – “Prayers at every Rooftop” – 9/2/2021Tag: Short Fiction
Short Story – “The Empty Prodigy” – Chapter I – 8/19/2021
Colors will drain from the open wound. Upon the carpet, upon the spaces where sunlight brought in from open windows is shown warmest, as these marks are left without memory for why or when they were applied. They just were, because colors can be left behind.
Color-blinded, some people are, though not ever blinded of the self. An ideal is a comparison to the self, of what one can make themselves to be. At first, a blank canvas. Then, perhaps something monstrous. Or, perhaps another thing resplendent. However, it is always innocent. Always to appear of ongoing progress, though that first step is still seen that could not be completely crossed. It is the white space of the underlying blank canvas. Always the innocence, always the purity. Nothing should, or nothing could shroud it, to cover every trace of sand or soil with the waters of an artist’s emotion.
Continue reading Short Story – “The Empty Prodigy” – Chapter I – 8/19/2021
Short Prose – 250 Words – “Height of Her Burial” – Love Story – 6/15/2021
Still-life. A stilled life. He weeps to form a garden made from her debris. He weeps, and he cannot even leave. He weeps the funeral back into togetherness, to the final time in being the blank witness to a sunshine that distanced itself so well. It was the final time to view the light, even as a slow-moving ray against his tear-stained cheeks. It was the moment to capture the togetherness of her, before slow decay became the unravelling.
He will go on, towards the lighthouse in his mind. He will shed tears to float backwards towards a grey sunset. He will set the scene upon the presence of the moon, folding messages for the wind to carry.
He will bleed his eyes to dried rivers. A drought, and then, another storm. More than all else, he will ruin himself as slow as she wilts inside the soil. Something is meant by this, while the rain from his eyes raises a garden from the grave. Among where she fell, was placed, was embraced by the silence inside where all else comes close, roots have begun to stretch.
A garden made of both grief and belief, that as something dies, another thing shall be raised. Towards the next sunrise, towards the sounds of another day.
Another face in the mirror to count the stars, within the everlasting journey to find a greater height. Beyond the melting bones, the scenery of silence being feared, the wasted breaths as sighs of grief made silver among winter.
Short Prose – 250 Words – “Gift you Strength, Bleed your Weakness” – Tragedy – 5/4/2021
Curtains, as everyone’s enemy. Concealment, of a human side, made as blessed. Safety was our concern, as all to everyone’s fear. Though, love would not lose. Love would not depart. Not ever, safely. Not at all, without the storm.
We are weary. In each other’s arms, we are heavy. I’ve granted you the yearning to live. I’ve given you the life sentence, to someplace for your adoration. Would you want Death, in life’s stead? Would you steal the moon, for the sun? Would coldness be your rebuke, to this promise of warmth? You would confess to being of another’s kind, of Death’s kinder words, for He has perhaps promised you more.
To the noose, you would go? Without the fortune of love, you should slow? A pulse to decline, a heartbeat that once skipped upon rocks to meet the other end of a lake, now to be just a repetition for your descension.
Love has made you wanting. For rest.
Though, not in these arms. Though, within skeletal ones. Death has made you a bed. You would lie on it. You would count the stars, in fierce vigor. You would then erase the moon, into blackness.
What concerns you, my love? Fragile one, what has turned you? Far from me, away from me, bleeding through Death’s door, with your back to me?
You would rain upon your own shelter. You would bend me, to break me. You would weigh me. We were both heavy. Were we not?
Short Prose – 200 Words – “Play the Notes of Tragedy” – Romanticism – 3/8/2021
Her heart, long and venomous was ever the sadness that chimed upon the strings. Could I? To stoop my head low to gift a kiss to her notes, would I then fade? As she, being the one who wishes to be vapor, I’d gather it in my lungs at this final leap.
Pioneered for the art of her suffering. Submerged as the dropped stem, I’d become, in the vast lakes of her soul. Then, to find her, could I ever bring her up?
What would the steps become? The mere walk, overboard, is enough to loosen me. Though, to take her from this bleeding state, can kill me. Carrying thorns from puddles, to the skies where open Heavens could be ours. Raising her from this rotten frame, sheltered as she’s been, by the old, nihilistic place of her decay. Impoverished by the din of time, of a few wails that carry her song through an outburst. Would the steps then overtake?
Falling through, as one wasted petal from the stigma of a rose, I could find something more alike. She’d be a raven, deep in of forested fables, doused however in the blood of her home. Half-way slain by the thickets. Thorns that have penetrated her flesh. And love would merely take the stain. Though, my own would drop her towards the latter half of her demise.
Short Prose – 300 Words – “The One who Grieves…” – Romanticism – 3/8/2021
He believed more in betrayal, than that of love. Watched, as the stars kissed his cheeks. Waited, as the haze melted him into a portrayal of surrender. Laughed, as the clouds mocked him among their height.
He kept something. A locket. Of a face with two roses for cheeks, blush for the sake of the lips, and two eyes that always made him weep. What a love that lays frozen before the petals. Skipping heartbeats and sadness that stirs in the trenches of his own veins. Blood flows, though to him, remains idle. Just a face that no longer moves. Two eyes, that never truly look back.
Standing before a lake, his heart is now just one more stone at the bottom of it. He wishes to know the world, for its end. Bending a knee, and his hard entrance to the earth will cover him. A minor leak from his eyes, to then regret.
Pangs of dread reveal him to motion, of nothing near. Bright crystal upon the lake that evokes the frozen tension, keeping him drowned. Stillness and itself, of a man with his locket, wastes seconds on the beach where pebbles are scattered at his feet. Precious moments, that could have been given to sheer recollection, rows a boat across this lake of his repeated sighs. Of sighs that whisper, of those that speak themselves in their repetition to shift with the faint hint of fog upon the lake’s surface. He is endless, both in thoughts, among his grief.
Where is the world to embrace him?
Where is the shouting command, from a Heaven that looks down? Where are the waiting arms, to welcome him back to warmth?
Find all else, and then he shall shatter.
Walking without sunlight, battered by the moonlight in his heart, and watered by the endless raindrops that shower from nowhere, he finds himself trapped in the debris. Wasted, with no mouth to truly speak, as there are no eyes to ever read.
Day #1 – 600 Words – Writing Prompt – “A Gift for Misery” – Romanticism – 12/5/2020
“How can hope, be this sick?” says he, to the fog of himself, before the mirror’s idleness.
For a reflection’s sake, love is his only teardrop to come forward, marking his humanity into the glass. It is at his feet. It is a puddle, mirroring him.
A photograph. Of a woman, to the world. To him, a young girl. A lovely face, delicate within the shadows that encapsulate where this man stands, in the dusky debris behind an office building. A life of blood stains his hands, though not before the reflection. Criminalized, in behavior, though human, in the deepest stain of his heart. As a sun that sets deep, to light the ocean aflame, drifting tears to the edges of eyelids, soon at the pull of gravity.
Oh, burial of a song. A melody that would break Earth, to bloody Mars, as a longing by him to meet this face on the battlefields of greatest love. In his hand, holds his heart.
One demon, who would be him, the man as a criminal. Just a speck that should be erased, though what does he do? As a criminal, he commits theft, to bloody his hands in murder, to hand narcotics to youngsters at schools. Surely a derangement needing an eraser to rub it away. Though, to the heart that he holds, is not something so buried could become unearthed?
Is there love beneath the ruins? Catching himself, in the sickness of it, he lets bleed the tears onto both photograph and mirror. They’d not be crimson, for tears of that sort would merely blot out the reflection of him, in that murky puddle.
He recedes. This man, of much weariness, finds in him the necessity for movement. One step, before the second one comes dragging and crawling. A need to find food, and dine in a place of shelter. For water might find him, in sleet or rain.
Coldness. Bloodless. Feverish in the open, though of his heart. Still unaware of her face, to its recognition, for the photograph does not bare resemblance upon his memory.
For beauty’s sake, for admiration’s purport, it is something to have for a light on his road.
Battered in the inescapable anguish of not knowing. Not staring into dust for its art, nor seeking downpours to quench thirst, for nothing will make him a rope. Nothing will forge what is meant to tie around, then to pull, a future towards his thin arms. He walks. A movement that is at most, slogged, and at the least, dried. As a river that requires tears, he does cry. He does mimic the floods that the skies echo. He does extend storms from his heart, though soon to back into silence within the trembling shadows.
He loves. A certain residence, in his heart, that has swallowed something he cannot tell. All, but a clarity. Everything to him, but a swell, a surge of something extraordinary.
“Who is she?” says he, on occasion, to the curtain that conceals love.
Remembrance. That is love. Memories that lie as flakes of snow upon the eternally-warm heart, to wake it. Blood runs on. A naked vow into the dirt, at his feet, written with disjointed fingers. Though, no clarity. To him, no memory.
He finds himself repeating words into puddles. A photograph. No answers come aloud, creating cold sounds against warm veins, to shock truth into the blood.
To walk, would mean to go on. Though, in the second of his repulsion, drifting from his endless search, he stares to the beauty of a woman. Of a photograph, where answers never float up from the bright eyes, nor the dark hair, nor the lips that retain specks of highlight.