Short Stories – Modern Romanticism

Flash Fiction – “Life in Repeated Circles” – 2/15/2022

There was, to a sea where no sun chooses to rise, a morbid fascination with life. With the hope, with the face that would be shown in the reflection upon the waves; this was where someone did look upon.

From his balcony, all he ever saw was reflections. Reflection of stars, of the moon, and of himself in a puddle that is upon another roof not so far beneath him. A witness to countless imperfections, a multitude of possibilities. All of them, as each could extinguish in an explosion, while all of them could be hazed into ripples from a sudden downpour. The stars, the moon could find themselves in a blaze, all so familiar to the human, yet still unexpected.

His face held everything mentioned. Imperfection. Possibility. And the haze. More than that, there was a downpour. His eyes are running with greater waves than ever the ocean before him could hurl forth. From a heart where more than a storm has been brewing, he had remembered. He recalled. He might have fallen from a swoon were he not leaning against a rail. He always required a handicap. The rails for his form. His hands for his eyes, where some of the droplets were caught.

Where does depression begin? It begins in the heart. Life began there, as only a mote of fulfillment. Something awoke, like an infant, to be the morning for the person who could stare at the sunrise in the reliving of purpose. A reminder for why one lives.

Where does such darkness end? Where it does not end is the morning. It ends in the heart. It ends where it began, while it remains for how long it lasts as a reminder. A reminder to the failure, the losses, and then comes the contemplation to join them, for they speak to the heart as being closest.

Could depression be given hope? It could, as it might be the case that this man could have turned around to see that the sun is rising. It is because it would have set before himself, as though he took in the view of his heart drowning in the ocean. A new light is all it takes, though no one will know what caused this man’s own to be extinguished. Oftentimes, we put all the firewood we could onto the blaze. We kept the light maintained. All it takes is a mere stumble to know whatever we loved was received this maintenance with imperfect hands. Hands that retain scars from previous lights, with burn marks from other hopes and other maintained blazes.

There was this morbid fascination with life. There was then this puddle beneath the man’s face; as once, it had not ever existed. Although, we might as well believe it grew there as a plant does, as it was cultivated into a lonely garden as a collection of tears being watered by tears.

A morbid fascination with life that now repeats in circles. What a cycle, and whatever outcome to the middling of a tale. For depression’s sake, this man could have taken his plunge from the balcony to that puddle, then to the ocean for his bathing. Did he cleanse, or did he? Clean, to be renewed. Clean, to be apart from pain, drowned in the same place as he might have seen his heart descend with the sun.

Thoughts. Clarity. Remorse, again. He wanders his mind over the subject of being lost in them, the thoughts that both fuel his anger and extinguish another type of fire being hope.

More mourning will awaken than the morning of a new day. More darkness, consistent with the depth of an ocean where light is not.

More memories that are more beautiful than the morbid fascination with life, recycled as trash to be another piece of trash.

Short Story – “An Elder’s Springtime” – 5,500 words – Unedited

He paces, in support of himself. His footsteps crumble remnants of a previous Autumn, for now the season is Spring. Something keeps his forward direction, though his heart requires a quilt, even as a hand to keep it company. This elder, this man, follows the sidewalk gleams, like it were a pathway of snow for the burial of a crippling load of memories. A true encore, a flutter of wings, press him on this path from the birds, overhead.

It is behind where nothing goes on, though the steps are speaking. Passersby are not telling his tale, though finding amusement in his loneliness. In his gait, there is what can be called the loner’s walk. He strides to the predictable speed of a man his age, though without energy in what could lift his legs further. It is this sight, perhaps seen of many elders, that their meaning for being old becomes greater when youth could hold his hand. It cannot be to mean this man is miserable, though memories could not be merely warm when they are hoarded. He falters, not with age, though with the carrying weight for being without much need for a smile. He will not receive the gift of an embrace, nor the kiss upon his crumpled lips, as his eyes can close for a moment more with morbid contentment.

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 – “Always, Never Lit” – Romanticism – 12/12/2020

How many tears can I hold, in arms, that do not carry the future? I cannot even carry the present forward, for I hold the blame in me. I hold the scars close, the present watered from my eyes, with the blue seas around my feet. Land is so far away. Same with daylight.

Though, the night?

The realm where each thing becomes so bright, encased by the sheer suddenness of what it represents. A coffin. One plug that was pulled, for a life, that had sung songs from its once-beating heart. An encasement, for a tangle of limbs, yet straightened by the funeral home. A house for open burials, where tears released from cheeks, like leaves from bent boughs. It is Autumn, somewhere, though the night shows chapters of winter.

Brightness, and encased, in that box. What it represents is a thing now unplugged, of a life, lowered into the empty space. A void, or a spot where trees are meant to grow. They still loose their leaves, the same as decay falls from the wilting carcass.

How did she last? How does she still remain? I no longer hold her, nor see the pitiable eyes that stared to me. She faces the dust of an eternity, without. No longer a dream may haunt her, as no more a heart can keep her awake.

I buried what I once threw a vow, forward to. I let go of something that never released. This room disturbs me, what with walls brandished in porcelain darkness. The corners threaten me, scorn me, ridicule the nothingness of me. Is there anything left to berate? A brokenness of damage, with life curtailing about its open volumes. Just chapters left to be remembered, of a fuse stayed to be extinguished.

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.

Short Prose – 450 Words – “A Man’s Love for a Woman” – Romance – 12/3/2020

We cannot look at love as anything other than a mode of stillness. Captivation.

Here, a woman named Lisa breathes, brought down upon a loveseat from her husband, Jonathan, and his hands. He has kissed her forehead, remaining damp to his lips from exertion. A wandering smile, darts from East to West across his mouth, when his gaze steps into her own.

Love does not forget, as it never aims to release, completely. Upon the loveseat, she rests, though in Jonathan’s arms, she remains.

It is a still voyage, where his heart has been dumped overboard as the anchor, from a ship made of gold. Love is that. A stillness. An ocean that remains calm, though by us, can make waves rise towards Heaven encased in a storm. A stillness, though never something to force. It is our emotions that imperfect us, though it is love that makes us realize them in fullness. Love. That which encompasses all emotion, is love, are the words of binding. Of rings that hold the same gold as that ship, so encompassing. The steadiness remains of it, as a surrounding ornament.

It is love that we are blind to, while engrossed in fear. Our realization for who we love, comes upon when we are trapped by them, embraced in arms that do not release, completely.

Beautiful, though abominable, are we, without love. Though, with it, we are understood of each imperfection, disguised over as we did with scars.

Love cannot manipulate, as when Jonathan can see Lisa, has knowledge that he cannot move her limbs of his own accord. When it is that a person can pray for love to move the dead, it proves always fruitless. Love cannot manipulate.

Love cannot raise form, though spirit. Through Jonathan, to his aching wife, Lisa, there is a captured memory of her, always entangled in his mind. Without a need to unbind her from his own cranium, he lives with the thought. For in love, there is no desire for a release, for a complete one. Even of her, whose own limbs have become disarranged by illness, love yet rests.

He loves her. Jonathan loves his wife, and from a simple glance to his face, can be understood of his loyalty to her. Of vows, of a loving heart, of a part to him that will not ever quit, he remains. Beauty for him, of a woman who has not gained a year upon her features, to his eyes, keeps the smile glowing upon these lips. Of his lips, smiling as they are at this moment, is one that cannot melt from neither sigh of grief, nor exhalation of exhaustion. He smiles, because he loves.

Short Prose – 350 Words – “Lost in your Arms” – Romance – 12/1/2020

A burial. You are my tomb. My place, in the world, is forsaken. Upon you, I will rot, decay and slumber. In your arms, I am lost. I do not heal, for I am lost.

I have always burned a trail for my feet to carry me. I have executed innocents, for the sake of my path. I did not look over my shoulders, to see their shoulders. To see the weights pressed upon them, I did not look. I did not wish for, in my time of pain, to see theirs. On my path, I went straight to your arms. In them, I last little more then a petal without its parent corolla. Though, I will die, treated by your last kisses.

I contemplate over my endless end. It is just a second more, though it is infinite. A pallid reckoning that sweeps me, as you do, gently to its reverse, in force. The love of you, attempts to bandage me. I cannot be bandaged, as I cannot be healed. Look at me, like an infant, aborted. Release me, as though you never loved me. Leak me out of you, like something to forget.

Draw me in the sand, though let the winds sweep the dust away. Place a curtain atop my demise, to then set a fire upon it. Let me not be known to you.

Diseased, as I am, living in times so natural to me. Loving you, as you love the dead.

You are weeping. Tears exit your eyes like dewdrops hanging from the ends of grass-blades. How many dreams must imagine themselves, for you to set your own path? Could you lose yourself on another mile, upon another extensive cloud?

Cross yourself as ivory in the dirt. Make yourself the purity that becomes known, to the world among its filth. Lift yourself. Send yourself, and do not look over your slender shoulder to see me, wasted in the wreckage.

You are the pathless angel, who must discover a course with your wings. Find utmost certainty away from me. Help the devils, driving empathy into them as a nail.

Short Prose – 250 Words – “But, who Understands my Tears?” – Romance – 11/24/2020

Who comprehends, else for you, the gates that have been broken open to spread the blue across the green? Who remembers, soon as they have caught, the subtle details to each of the creases upon these bandages? Of those, with tightness to this skin, that tape my withered form?

Who sees, else but you, the sickness that has made me lurch?

All this pain has not come from you. I am a man whose senses, whose hands, whose words are his own. All this, to create castrated vision. Among this, to never see strength. Yet, in you, I see something magnetic. You pull my eyes to these scars, allowing my light to travel past the darkness. Though, who understands the tears that come? It is you, among no one else.

Love cannot bide your time, though you will see me everlasting. For I know you stand this for the simple sake of sustainment.

As you have bandaged me, you have made me perfect. As I have wounds, you have let the dust become flesh. As I have died, within, for just a single kiss, my mind has come alive.

I worry no more, when you hold this tired and limp form of my own. I live alone, no more, when I know you are near. With a single touch of your hand, you sculpt the life into me. You are not to blame, for anything.

You may depart, with the sun in your eyes. You may see the fog, behind. You may see yourself, finding eternity in another’s embrace.

Short Prose – 350 Words – “Holding you in Empty Hands” – Romance – 11/23/2020

I lay here, recounting the days that you have said those words upon the lakes. Upon where ripples cast ever greater waves, while loosening tides from your eyes, to your lips. There is great sickness, here. There is great powerlessness, here. Among me, so much is torn. Among you, there is much more to be born. Love grows in you, like thorns, like marble that had life. Like the green mixing itself with blues, as the ocean finding home in the land, for a flood.

I leave here, without a tear to name my place, upon Earth. For I loved you, among all gentle fragments of my heart. Though, they’ve become the savagery of a helpless beast. A man, in too much denial. Find your place, my love. The home you call home, is not this man’s own.

You are the blessing that the rose is meant for, in its gift. You are the life that must live. You are the woman whose vulnerable side, must find strength. Your tears will make newer lakes, for fish, for the fowl upon its surface. As you weep, so will the waters be flourished. As I depart, I will go with a breath upon that lake. As you dip your feet into your very grief, you will not see the sunset, though the sunrise for your future. For I give you a crown, made from my own pain. I want you to wear it. I want you to never scorn yourself.

Just dream of a night, without me, without the man whose sickness caused you grief. Find a world without the tears, without your own, and without the many lakes. For they will one day dry themselves, as you will discover an anger. Though, not to the anger, for I wish for your relief, away from your grief.

Like a merriment, due from the sunrise, you shall find an ocean to cross. You shall find a place in time, where love holds many moments more. By all of that, you shall forget me, for I am the beast that can no longer scold you.

Short Prose – 350 Words – “For No One Else” – Romance – 11/11/2020

How upon a river, when that stream comes as tears, you’d ever be swept aside? My hands are disfigured, so unlike yours that bare themselves to the sunlit moon. Mine do tremble, beneath my face that has been smeared. Smeared by ash, while your hands are not with scars, though with the purity I’ve kept.

Can I love until the bleeding stops? For no one else, and for everything more, have I always loved you. My pain is an empire, of its own. My love is a woe, of its own. Though, to your safety, have I’ve continually kept myself beaten down.

Like one hollow demon, devoid of his healing, there is nothing to raise me. I accept that, when the stars do not look like fruit to my eyes. For your delicate consumption, you can pick one to hold, when I lift your heavenly form.

For not my pain to heal, though for yours to be sealed, can I always remain this way. Just a droplet from a raging pour of tears, who never mattered to himself. It is just, for this is the way. This is the way the stars align. Your face, the skies, among the hanging boughs of the birches, as each thing burns a vision for my stare. We are not clothed by our remorse to the past, though by our hopes for the future.

Sing to me, dear one, that you know my pain never mattered. Live for me, when you stand above, knowing that my tears will be lost. I have always lived at your side, growing love with thorns that scrape my flesh. Let us live with the sickness of words, among the proof of action. My pain, is my demonic self. For my anger, I do become something else. Though, for no one else more, can I become something born into the arms of a woman. As you, the love I have kept upon the curves of the Earth, seeing each thing that passes among everything that arrives.

Will you ever love with contempt, to me? I have been terrible, upon a time, though only to never see the demonic appearance, of me. I reject healing, for yours.

Short Prose – 500 Words – “Her Beauty, and Broken Heart” – Romance – 10/11/2020

She holds a smile in her hands, while filming the ocean’s sounds with her heart. Sounds that return to her, upon when the waters lick the shoreline. Sounds that matter only to a world that never responded quick enough, upon when sickness took her beloved. A world that only gave a whisper from a dying heart, from breathing lungs, as his eyes closed to one last fallen tear.

She holds her heart in her chest, bare with wickedness to each sagging breast. Roses are collected at her feet, missing their stems, while leaving the red to flood a clashing wave of vermillion to the drifting sea. Her mouth comes open, to let loose not merely a syllable, though a breath to it, as well. A gust, and half a name that was matched, rips from her tongue, and lays flat upon her lips. The ocean does not take it.

She drifts. Her eyes wander, as the ocean does, to the skyline, in view of a rising sun. In darkness, she cascades. In this darkness, tears run to form puddles beneath her eyes.

Love lost, as she finds her breath in the ocean. She hears her yearning in the waves. She hears him, like the whisper from a dying heart and lungs, battering the chapter closed. She hears a love that never gave another day.

Yet, the sun rises, makes a glimpse of light, a slight feeling of warmth, to her face. How can another day matter, to this stem, this bush, whose roses have fallen? How can it matter, when she bleeds her colors to the blue?

Her arms, so bare, hold shoulders that tremble.

Her face swims in her torment. An apocalypse of grief, where hearts turn black, as oceans turn grey. How many eyes turn her way? How many embraces can she hold? How much sickness can allot itself? How much more? How many places can she open herself, to be shut inside as a mouse to its temptation?

Of blood, so warm, yet it drains from her, to the cold ocean. The sea, where fires are lit on the horizon, though bring no relief. The glaciers of her grief stand like lighthouses, guiding her sighs along to be passed. Out her throat, and then, on towards the madness of another thousand nights to weep herself to sleep.

For she had buried it all, deep in her heart. She had lost it all, deep in the soil. Six feet that averages the height of a man, growing under the earth. The roots of his memories scatter and spread like trails of ebony. Of darkness that leaves its moments for this woman to remember. And, is it a curse?

Gently, she leans her head back to view the sky. Its pallidity wraps her. Its overcast appearance takes her. For she wishes to be an angel that knows no distance.

Short Story Excerpt – Title: “A Display of Sweetest Grief” – Romance – 9/15/2020

Grief is never so much a thing to conquer, in as much it is merely felt, like a leaf that had strayed from its branch. It has nestled itself into our shoulder, and stays there, not vowed for escape.

All tears carry weight, simple weight. All memories carry not weight, though force. We are not weighed by our memories. Though, we are more pulled by them. Like the most alluring type of gravity, we are countered from that escape, because grief has made us run in a memory’s direction. We want to feel pain, because pain is all to feel.

Like a drain, death has a path for life. Like a disguise, life has a way to reject death. Like a martyr, both life and death come to live, and recede away in the name of each other.

What have we, of a man that needs no name? For a name would render such weight of grief, needless. A name is such a brand, such a label, so needless to inquire over, unless in memory.

It is he, a painter of no words, though many images. Images that have never decayed in his mind, yet have found themselves onto the canvas, many a time. Worlds of confusion that have been shaped into a scenery of sense, formed about blankness, made as wash of curves or tumble of scraping lines.

Here, upon a day when all weights can press him, as though these winds passing as bereaving sighs are rising from a hollow so deep, he can touch his roots. He can seek the verdure in the underlying wood, of tastes so bitter, though captured as sweet. Here, when grieving winds can pass through him, from forests that hum with the song of the same pressing tension, he can turn towards the earth. He can speak to the soil, to make of one loving face, a famous expression to him.

One woman, without clarity to anyone else, but him, in its magnitude. For her face could alight any drying ember in his heart. It is a stare from hers that could guide the stars to unite in one conjoined discoloring, of that garish white. Of all stars, mingling in his heart, making him wonder to their wandering, about so lost in this field of resplendence.

She could, were she alive, relive countless moments for him, in timeless recollection of countless areas to be lost. She could, were she alive, sing to him to find himself, and align with the innumerable to become a one.