The End

It’s been a while. And by a while, I mean a long time. Sometimes it feels like aeons have passed and I no longer recognise who I used to be. And other times I look at myself and think I’ve just upgraded. Or downgraded. Who knows.

It feels as though the words no longer come to me as smoothly. There’s no flow, no rhythm, I didn’t use to struggle with this. I wrote in my last post of how perspective changes after the loss of a loved one and someone explained to me a couple of weeks back of how grief is like a concussion. Sometimes you don’t feel it’s affects straight away, sometimes you don’t see any different. I think this loss of being able to write is a part of it.  But you cannot give up on the things you enjoy, so here I am trying another 30 day challenge.

Funnily enough, I wrote those two paragraphs a while ago, but since then so much has changed. We are in the midst of a pandemic, my anxiety rocketed, but thankfully isn’t so high anymore, and I’m feeling the spark to write again. The words are a-coming, slowly, slowly, I’m healing.

Or maybe I have never really healed. Our wounds close but they remain under the skin, just waiting to be pulled out by a stray thought or whisper. Us humans are fickle like that, I find. Or maybe it’s just me. But I don’t think I’m unique in this case. These past 4 month have been life changing in many ways, but I’m also still stagnant in many. Hey, that’s life.

Prompt 4? 5? Who knows

The End: Write a poem titled ‘The End’ that isn’t about death, a break-up, or the apocalypse.

The end is nigh, she says.
The recesses of her mind ask her of it,
but she resists the temptation to give in.

It is a fear that holds her back,
because,
once burned, twice shy. Or something.

The end is nigh.
She wants to commit,
but fear rises up her throat,
a sickness that has spread through years
(years of holding herself back
from excellence
from marching to goodness).

The end is nigh.
Because she sees the end of dredging
through the mud
that enslaves.
Her mind is done.

How long since she has compelled herself
to be better.
She must shake off the muck
that has her shackled in
her own treachery.

I Am Drowning

I Am Alive

Rest your weary bones.
The world has ground them down.
Now
you have time to rest them,
heal and grow.

The door may be locked
but you
have never been more alive.

I Scar My Heart

Love is not convenient.

Love is an inconvenience,

for, deeply abiding,

you must deal with the scarring

on the heart of your love

and in turn,

scar your own heart.

An Escalating Madness

200 word story prompt 2

As an artist, your main character has it well. But when everything they’ve worked for is burnt in a tragic fire, they have to start all over with nothing to their name and a roommate determined to hold them back. 

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The remains of years of struggle and strife was now ashes. Grey dust, charred smells and scorch marks he would have once seen as artistic were now a waking nightmare.
“This is real”, he said, stunned. A scoff came from the other room. “No kidding, how will you come back from this!” His roommate sounded gleeful, as if the thought of Adam failing to pick himself up would bring him joy.
And it would, Adam knew. In their three month stint as roommates, Jonathan had done his utmost to make his life difficult. He’d come home from his job at the coffee shop and find knives out of place, marks on his canveses that weren’t there before and on many occasions, butchered animal innards all over the table. The ad in the paper had been a desperate move so he’d be able to pay his rent, but it had been a terrible mistake.

Jonathan knew how to act polite and respectable in front of others, but Adam suspected that telling Jonathan just two days prior that he no longer wanted him to be living there had escalated the madness he saw in his eyes. And with Jonathan’s room burned to charcoal too, he had no way to prove it.

I Grieve

Grief is sudden.

It is a spark in your deepest depth

Racing through every vein

tears come.

Grief is an outpouring.

Grief is a knowing.

The one you lost

now returned to their Maker.

Just as one day you will leave

Taking with you your deepest depth –

– Grief is fear

Your deepest depth are ugly

And scabbed

A frankenstein’s monster of good and bad

One day turned out

And grief,

It is Unescapable.

Grief is fleeting.

Returning,

picking at your scabbed wounds

dousing them in gratitude

                              repentance

                              praise

hoping they disappear

And falling again

But hoping

In the Mercy of the One

who took back your loved one.

 

The Turning

A 200 word challenge. First prompt:

A character finds an odd-looking egg in the forest. When they take it home, they could never have predicted what was inside. 

__________________

It was staring at her.

She jerked her head away, an unknown force compelling her to turn around and look again. But it was calling her.

The egg was unusual. A deep sea-green, trendils of gold snaking through the shell. Smaller than she has ever seen, the size of a thumbnail. Temptation overcame her as she pocketed it.

It was a mistake. The journey home was tense. The compulsion to keep her gaze fixed on the egg stayed. As soon as she arrived home, she succumbed. The tendrils of gold seemed to come alive the more she looked. Her mind hazy, the gold was now swirling around the egg like a mini tornado. It suddenly stopped. A sharp ringing filled the air as the gold rushed towards her and then down, down, down. A sharp crack. And suddenly, silence.

It was as though the fog that had filled her mind had lifted. She looked up, heart racing. She was no longer home. Rather, clouds of green and blue met her. A snap. She turned. Gold eyes stared into hers. And she fell, deeper and deeper and when she stood upright again, she looked out to the clouds. A golden sheen covered them.

_____________________

I must admit, I found this incredible difficult. I don’t know how to write stories, hah. Even now, I read this and am not satisfied with it. Some things don’t flow. 

I Pull Old Wounds

It reaches her.
It is the smell of burnt dreams.
She    reaches, pulling old wounds,
rotting, decaying flesh. Decrepit.    Blistering.

The acrid odour reaches her
sour swathes of emptiness.
        Forward, bones creaking from disuse

And sparks.
The flames start.
Burning,   at last.
The ashes turn,
And no longer does this acrid smell reach her

rather, swathes of empty to fill.
She starts again.

 

(After 2 years, maybe more, I have finally written a poem.
Not completely satisfied, but pretty pleased anyway, even if I say so myself!)

I Want No Distractions

11 October 2016.

Well I think it’s safe to say I lost my way a little.  30 day prompt has turned into quite a few months (9 months, but who’s counting) prompt. But not to fear, I’ve found my way back (for now). I suppose in some ways the timing is just right for this.

4/30. Future: Where do you want your future self to be? What do you want to overcome, what characteristics of yourself do you want to do away with?

I think I’m a little strange. I don’t think of where I want to be in the future. Sure, some things (quite a few things) about me I want to improve, my relationships, my sense of self, but where I’ll be… I just kind of float along with wherever life takes me. It’s a funny thing. Final year of university and everyone asks ‘so what are your plans?’ and they’re met with my blank face and a sheepish ‘I have not a clue’. And I truly don’t.

It’s  question that has been swimming around in my thoughts for quite some time. 5 years? Maybe more? Ah, the flaws of our education system. Asking an 18 year old to decide on what they want to be, who they want to be, nope, not buying it. I’ve made some mistakes and bad choices but someone recently said to me, “we learn from these things,” and I suppose they were right. I know they were right.

And yet I’ve never had clear visions of where I want to be. Sometimes it’s as if everyone but myself has that one thing that aspire towards, that one thing that means more or they are naturally better at. I don’t. I don’t have that one thing that drives me. And it occasionally makes me wonder if I’m somehow a little broken. I guess we all are. Or do people just fall so into something, it becomes their focus and maybe that makes *them* a little broken?

It’s all a little hazy. It feel somehow out of reach, to have a goal when even tomorrow is unpredictable. I suppose the sensible answer is that I’d like to have a job, have a husband, kids maybe? Definitely travelling the world at least once a year. All the usual things that make life, life. A life to me at least.

8 February 2017.

I started this post a long time ago and I’ve left it as it is. But my entire perspective has changed and I have changed. The death of someone close to me has made me so aware of certain things – Namely, that where I’ll be and who I’ll be in the future does not matter. What does matter is that I have the people I love around me for always, that I strive to maintain our relationships no matter the distance between us, that I put in the effort to reach out to people.

It’s an astonishing thing to realise how lacking you are in certain ways. I am somehow stronger after losing this person, but at the same time I look to myself and wonder if I will be able to hold onto this clarity I have on how to better myself as a person as time moves on. Because it’s going to shape me to some degree and then I will drift along again, aimless. And I will be numb. And soon the reality of life will hit again and I will lose another that I love. And the cycle will start again.

This is the reality of the life we will live and to try to forget. Death surrounds us. It is inevitable. And it is when you think of death that you realise who you want to be. Because the person you leave behind is all you will be remembered by. No amount of distraction will take away our inevitable.

So:

Future: Where do you want your future self to be? What do you want to overcome, what characteristics of yourself do you want to do away with?

I am tired. In my soul. I haven’t reached even a quarter of a century but the earth is full of vileness and hatred. And it makes me tired. I want my future self to be self-aware. Of herself. Of others. Of what others are going through. Putting herself in a place where she is able to help others. I don’t want to overcome things, I want to be able to learn to live with what surrounds us and shapes us. And I want to be able to live with the choices I make when life throws something at me. I would like to overcome two things that come to mind though: 1. My procrastination skills. 2. My ego.

I want to have a balance in my life. Just walk down the middle road and be content with what is given to me. That is it. Just be content with what you have.

I Hope

An occasional ask of numbness

from the grief that pours through the earth’s veins.

For the leaves are entrenched in the blood of the innocent,

with her eyes hopeless.

And the earth rebels and roars at the injustice.

but justice will come.

Surely justice will come.