Edge – Trifecta

 

Here’s what this weekend’s Trifecta is all about:

“This weekend we are playing another type of word game with you.  Below are photos from the 33rd page of one of our very favorite books, Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge.  What we want you to do is to scour the page (click to enlarge), choose 33 words, and reshape those words into a piece of your own.  Your piece does not have to tell an entire story.  We just want to see what you can do with this particular word bank.  Punctuation is up to you.  Use whatever you need, whether or not it appears in the photos.”

 

 

I absolutely love this!  It has bones and flowers and children and rifles, such intriguing contrasts. Here’s the 33 words I chose:

 

Blackness carried him along

Wild woods of his mind

Starflowers so hollow-boned

Entrails of umbrage

Ripping, flapping panic

So hidden

Beneath the green leaves

He picked up the rifle

Edge of life came

Growing death

Image source:
dailymail.co.uk

Growing death

 

Your dainty body
Immured in goodbyes
A dry, silent pleading
Lolling out of your mouth
Your swollen tongue
And taste buds
Like overripe berries
Bursting
In their longing
To be covered with a blanket
Of fresh air, once more

In answer
I brought your hands
To my lips
Kissed them into a handloom
Allowed my warm breath
To become a spinner
Diving for your wish
To find it nestling
In the gullies of time
Lining your palm
I gave them all my air
Till they were fresh valleys
And your green eyes suddenly
Wet grass glistening

Then I took a deep drink
Inhaled your soul
Drew out of you
A raindrop thread of life
Pieced it gently together
With my teeth, felt it
A Nightjar flapping
Pushing dawn along
With its wings
Your wings
Curled to rest on my tongue
I ran, ran, ran
Out to the open

There I freed you
Blew you out, head rushed
So you could feel again
The sprinkle of spring
In the air
That was when
I heard a deep gasp
The whole landscape
Sucking its breath
To welcome you
That was when
I understood the halo
Life’s perfect mosaic:

Your smile
Bowing like a rainbow
On the sky
Tying together the miracles
Of earth and air
Your mouth open
To greet the delicate taste
Swirling in the wind
The taste of overwhelming
Overflowing, growing life
You, laid to rest
With the whole world
Imprinted on your eyelids

Whispers Of Peace

Image Source: Peacefelt.org

I would like to dedicate this to everyone who has ever lost someone, in life or in death. You’re important, so just don’t lose yourself, okay?

Also, I would like to dedicate this to my dear brother who inspired me to write this.

Wishing you all love and peace today, once again!

 

Whispers Of Peace

 

Love, please don’t cry

For it’s not hate that penetrates my muscles

It is not pain, only oxygen

Rushing through me, lifting me

Circling me like warm water in the womb

 

And in this soft lake of feathery air

I find peace, here my skin breathes

Till it grows wings that know no laws

No gravity or shreds of tears

 

Patterned with bullet holes

Love, please don’t cry

Please just try to reach for the wind

To hold its flickering freedom gently

Love it into tranquility, the same wind

That carried me away into the invisible haze

 

For there you will find me again

My laugh the light night breeze dancing

Beside your ear, melting your pounding fists

Catching your Rosemary tears

There you will find me, naked, cloaked in air

In smiling whispers of peace

Questions on life and death- Daily Prompt, Connect the dots

Today’s Daily Prompt:

Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow.

 

Questions on life and death

I dream of murder, I dream of murder sleep or wake.

I’m afraid people can see the shameful glow of it on my skin. Oh I can feel their suspicion, it is screaming loudly at me from behind their pursed lips as they pass me by. They know. You know.

So what are we going to do about it?

“We?” ask your raised eyebrows.

Yes, we. Because now it is your secret too, this dream of mine. So would you please listen to me?

I have only had one dream in life so far. When I was little, my dream was to be a rally driver. But my legs were too short to reach the pedals. I cursed and a teacher slapped. Sorry, am I boring you? I know you didn’t start reading this to make a Freudian analysis of my childhood.

You started reading this because you saw murder. It rose in your mind, the blood-coloured shadow of it. It scared you, it drew you in. Can you not see? Even you, even you dreamed of murder then. You coloured it in, in your own mind. Even you got curious, just then, curious of murder. You and me are not too different, after all, you see.

You could love me.

You would, as a matter of fact, you would love me. If I had started this differently. If I had started by quoting T.S Elliot, The Wasteland perhaps, you would have said: “Oh, I love poetry! What else do you like?” And then you would have discovered that I am funny, and an attentive listener.

Or maybe, I could have started this by carrying your grocery bags for you in the rain. You would have still got wet, of course. But you would have been grateful to me, grateful that I freed your hands from the handcuffing bags. Grateful because the weight of the bags was pulling you down to the ground with them, your head heavy of responsibilities. Actually, how do you know that I didn’t help you out? How do you know that I wasn’t the person who opened a door to you today? The passer-by who you watched with a kind eye? How do you know?

Or I could make you hate me. Right now, with my next sentence. How do you know I have not already killed? How do you know I’m not the most hated convict, the one that even other criminals despise?

See, the seed of hate could be planted in your mind, just by giving you those impressions. They had an effect upon you, and whether they were right and just impressions was totally irrelevant to your feelings. That is the difficulty in life, first impressions. You know one thing about a person, and you think you know it all. Or enough to like them or dislike them, at least.

Isn’t it funny how it works in jails? The bizarre hierarchy they hold. Think about it. A man comes in who has killed a woman. Other people, convicts themselves, spit on him. They shout at him, they judge him. They kill him. Then in comes a woman who has killed a man. Everyone is quiet. No-one knows what to say, what to do. Because they have just killed a man too.

“But surely, that is not as bad as killing a woman?” they ask the woman.

The woman disagrees.

“You’re not killing women and men. You’re killing humans. All killing is the same, it’s killing of life.”

The others get angry now, they don’t like being contradicted. So, they kill the woman. They don’t want to see her at breakfast. Then they would see their guilt, staring at them from the other side of the table with its suprisingly gentle brown eyes. But now, they realise in horror, they have killed a woman. Just like the man they killed because he had killed a woman. Before, people who despised them in the street didn’t matter. But now, now they have become what they despised. Now it matters, because they despise themselves.

So who are you to judge my dream? Who are you to judge anyone’s dream? Anyone’s deeds? Who is anyone?

Don’t get aggrevated, I’m not trying to piss you off. I’m asking you this because I don’t know the answers myself. You don’t know either? Oh… See, you and me are not very different. Because after all, we are both just humans.

So can I reveal you my dream now, reveal it all? Because there is something you don’t know.

I have only one wish for you, before I do. Do not judge me. Do not hate me. Pity me, for there are men who dream of many great things. There are men who dream about buying their children new shoes. Buying a ring to their girlfriend. Oh, those are nice, strawberry-tinted dreams. Then there are men like me. The only dream I have been given, since I abandoned my childhood one, is a dream of murder. Which one of us do you think leads a happier life?

And if you judged me, if you sentenced me to death because death it what I supposedly want to give others,  you might think you did a right thing. Congratulations, you’re the noble heir of Hammurati. An eye for an eye. But is that justice to you? Is that justice? Are you the one with the keys on your hand, are you the one who has the right to unlock life and death? To decide? Are you the judge, powerful enough to halt and restart the order of life? Are you?

If you are, please reveal your wisdom. Please, let me kiss your hands and buy you flowers. Please let me show you respect. And please please, you wiser being, solve my problem:

Love Thy Neigbour As Thyself. Now that is a golden rule of life, don’t you think? But tell me, what do you do if you don’t love yourself? Who is going to save you then, and your neighbour, from yourself? I treat people exactly as I treat myself. Disrespectfully.

And don’t you think for a second that I don’t admire those other kind of people. Those who love themselves. Those girls with prim dresses, cradling heavy books on their lap like they were precious babies, their ankles pointing forward. They’re always going forward, learning. Loving. Once, they will have those books on their shelves to remind them of their university days, when they met the guy who had the most dazzling blue eyes. (I wish I could have been that guy. Oh shut it. On with the story.) And she has put the books aside now, to cradle her baby. The baby has the most dazzling blue eyes. His father is in the kitchen. The kitchen fills the house with warm air but it is not the steam of his cooking. It is his love.

And me? Only hate was given to me, in the womb. It is like a violent serpent inside me, it is like drunk Dionysos ordering me to drown yet another pint of bitterness; drink, drink my love. Drink up, sink down. Hate is acid in my throat, it burns my heart.

So now, now I should tell you my dream. I think it is time. I have disgusted you out of your wits, scared you a little perhaps, the way those weird men do when you’re making your way home and it’s dark, those men who talk to lamp posts. Let me tell you, those men, they only talk to lamp posts because they have no-one else to talk to. Not because they want to bribe the lamp posts to attack you with him.

But I cannot do it! I cannot! Now, that I should reveal my dream to you, I cannot. It is too much. Oh, not too much for me, you silly. I have to live with it everyday. But it might be too much for you to take. I’m afraid I have wasted your time. We must depart. Goodbye!

Did you say something?  Sorry, I couldn’t quite hear you? My dream? What… Oh you want to know?

That changes things. Hmm… I was not given a choise with this dream, maybe that is why it pains me so. But you made a choice, how brilliant! Maybe making a choise will save you. You take this dream off me, out of your own free will? How strange! Thank you! Here it is:

I dream of murder, I dream of murder sleep or wake.

But not because of what I have just told you, no. Not because of hatred, not because of my past or because I feel lost. I do not dream of murder where I would hold the knife on the throat of this world, no!

I dream of murder where I would be the blemish on the pavement left behind when the murder scene has been cleaned up, when the murderer has been arrested. I dream of murder, one that I would not carry out. I dream of murder in which I was the victim.

That surprised you. I bet you thought I walked out of the Shining (That guy, he wanted best to his family too maybe. He just didn’t know anymore what best was.)  But why dream of such a horrible thing?

Because I have seen a child being murdered.  After that I thought, if I could save one child I would give myself away.

After that I thought, if I had to choose one side of the blade, one side to view life and death from… I would choose the side of death. I would choose to be the victim. Not because I want to die, particularly, but because I don’t want to be the one deciding who lives.  My life is the only life I can decide on. And I would like to give mine to a child.

So what do you think of me now? What do you think of dealing out life and death? Right and wrong?

Playing God – Daily Prompt

The Daily Prompt- Coming to A Bookshelf Near You

Write a summary of the book you’ve always wanted to write for the back cover of its dust jacket.

Playing God

Have you ever lost someone to death?

He had.

In his dreams he could see her falling, the car like a raging bull that sends her spinning, throws her up, up, higher. She glides through the air, gracefully at first, the wind humming peacefully… but then she starts to fall, her limbs looking all mangled and dislocated. An unhuman crash rings out as the wind screen pierces her head open, the tenderness of her temples forever disturbed. She falls down the bonnet, falls down into nothingness, into death.

But seeing her die in rewind is not the most painful part. No,  the most painful moment is the blissful forgettance that follows, as he wakes up panting and then fools himself into believing that it was just a dream, just a horrible dream. And as he reaches to her side of the bed, just to feel her soft hair, all he finds is a cold pillow. It still has the shape of her head imprinted on it, a solid proof of the nights they have spent together, curled up in love.  So he listens to her tapping downstairs, waits to hear the kettle boiling and breakfast plates clinking, just like every morning. But the house stays silent now, the house stays empty.

In that moment, in that hammer stroke of reality, death finally sniffs him out. It gatecrashes his heart, moves in with its heavy luggage and makes itself sadistically comfortable. That is the moment he remembers that love is forever lost.  That she is forever lost.

But what if she isn’t? What if she survived?

That is the question he has to ask himself when an unknown woman suddenly walks through his door. That stranger, she carries a tint of familiarity on her face. That woman, she moves like her. She smiles like her.

Then she confesses that she is her.

Is he going to believe her, welcome her back? Is he going to take that hope, embrace the sweet solace it brings? Is he going to love her as if she really is his lost love?

Or is he going to turn her away, tear apart her words, forever carrying that little regret in his heart? That little doubt, that bittersweet seed of a newly found faith in life. That one, burning question:

What if she really is her, resurrected?