You can speak now
I am ready; I will drink your scorpion tea.
Even this axe in my heart is
Beautiful in the mist.
Your knowing smile makes me wonder…
Have you come to offer me solace
Or to lead me astray
Again?
No matter: I have found my center.
Alone, I see what I did not see before.
Strength steals through my soul
This fog has taught me a thing or two.
This was my first time visiting Three Word Wednesday. I had a lot of fun with this. For this week the words were:
Fracture
Noise
Vanish
I can’t write to you…
You understand, don’t you?
The silence is deafening, the tension so high. I’m drinking tea, looking at each passing face from this salmon colored chair. Yet all I see are images with no story. Blurred faces vanishing into the next scene.
I would welcome the noise if I could hear it. You told me how you needed me to say something. You texted me your longing, yet all I can do is sit here, fractured, drumming my chipped nails against this perfect porcelain plate.
Perhaps you will leave now. Annoyed. Frustrated.
And I will remain, sipping this tea, inhaling its fragrance.
Welcoming a caress that you could never offer.
To kick things off in a new direction, I’m posting a short work of fiction. I’m going back to my roots, people! Normally I would put this in my Writing Prompts page, but thought I’d buck convention and give you a sample of what might be there in the future. This prompt had to do with some kind of exchange, a kind of tit for tat. My goal was to use the prompt in an unexpected way.
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Daryl lay prone on a dirty twin mattress, arms splayed out to the side. Soured milk, half-eaten yogurt, and rancid deli meat lay forgotten on a worn table. Like Pick Up Sticks scattered across the room, the other occupants registered euphoria to barely met desperation.
Angry welts could be seen lining both of Daryl’s pale arms through the weak afternoon sun. Sandy blond hair curled gently around his ear, caressing the latest bruise on his neck. He had been tripping for about an hour when his body’s lack of oxygen forced him wide awake. Gasping, he grabbed for his throat, eyes dilating. Within in moments he started convulsing, his lips looking like a child who had eaten too many blueberries.
Turning away from some new customers, Bruce pocketed his money and walked toward the room’s only mattress. Looking down, he folded his arms across his chest and kicked Daryl in the gut. The guy was going down, he’d seen it a dozen times before. It wasn’t Daryl’s death that bothered him so much as losing a good customer; that as well as it happening in his place.
“Damn,” he said. “Kali – we’re going to need to roll. Grab the dope and wipe the place down. I mean ALL of it. I don’t want a single print left anywhere, capiche?”
Kali looked over, nodded, and started packing the syringes first. Her pale fingers looked exotic in the gloom, like a new species of spider. Just as she was about to leave, she noticed a shiny gold Cross pen in Daryl’s shirt pocket. Grabbing it, she swapped the abused, bitten Bic she normally carried in its place. Patting his still warm chest, she hummed and turned out the light before she left.
From One Single Impression: Prompt 75: Windows
I saw her through my car window this morning…
It was the black high heels that caught my eye, the toes peeping through like painted eggshells.
Frayed blonde hair blew across her face as she stretched to adjust a sign that said,
“Open House. Ocean View!”
If it wasn’t for the white Mercedes just a few feet away, she could have been any crazy person on the corner.
At first, I thought she was a crazy person… who would willingly stand in the dirt on a street corner under the freeway?
And then as the sun shifted, I saw the smart suit jacket. The falling facelift, the too tight skirt.
Was it Channel No. 5 I smelled as I passed by…
Or desperation?
April Belle 