Evident Is Relevant – A Story Poem

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers. This week’s photo prompt is provided by Yarnspinnerr. Thank you Yarnspinnerr!Please click lil froggy for other stories.

Here is the photo and my entry:

Evident Is Relevant

The moment was buttery
like a croissant
electric
like a java jolt
and the air
thick all around the table between us.

The setting was white
like a barista’s heart
drawn bright
and feathered upon
the stillness.

Let’s not dwell on this.
How hard it was to lose you.

I should have seen
the no entry signs
before you left.

Another moment
slipped away
between words I wouldn’t hear.

Ellespeth

w/c 76

Today’s Writing Music

Today’s writing music…

Ellespeth   ♥

Thoughts At A Fountain – Flash Fiction

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  So grateful to PJ for hosting this weekly challenge. This week’s photo prompt is provided by wildverbs. Thank you wildverbs!

Please  follow lil  froggy for more stories:)

Thoughts At A Fountain

I’m so lost without you. So lost, even, that last night I walked a long while until there was the fountain.

That place where you first kissed me. Where we held hands. Where each water’s drop mixed into a melody of hope and we’d wished upon the reflections of late night stars.

“I’m gonna marry you one day,” you said that long ago summer. You leaned over and kissed my cheek. We held close to each other.

And it all came true.

Except,

now you’ve gone and died on me. How could you go so far off our plan like that?

Ellespeth

Faded Little Hearts – Fiction

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  So grateful to PJ for hosting this weekly challenge  This week’s photo prompt is provided by Yinglan. Thank you Yinglan for our prompt!

Please follow lil froggy for more stories:)

Here is the photograph and my story:

Faded Little Hearts – Fiction

Faded little hearts painted on cream-colored walls.  All the laughter.  All the hugs.  Selfies on Facebook galore.  My belly button turned into an outie.

And then everything inside of me ran hot.  Cold.  I can’t breathe.   I’ve fallen.  Crumbled somewhere dark.  But the hearts are still there.   I cling to their colorless shapes.   Between my legs feels wet.

Someone’s lips upon mine.  Someone’s hands hard against me chest.  Someone singing.  “Uh,, uh, uh, uh…Stayin’ alive! Stayin’ alive!”

But the hearts are still there.  And my clothes are red . And we lost you somewhere between my breaths.

Ellespeth

Saying Goodbye To Tipper – A Poem/Maybe A Journal Entry

Saying Goodbye To Tipper

Leaving a marriage
thirty years strong
until one day it wasn’t

so then

you’re stooping down
embracing your dog
in good-bye

and you hold each other
until each of you
pukes.

Now
that’s sobbing

that’s what parting
feels like

looking back.

Ellespeth

Not Much Left To Guard – Flash Fiction

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  So grateful to PJ for hosting this weekly challenge. This week’s photo prompt is provided by J.S. Brand. Thank you J.S.!

Please follow lil froggy for more stories:)

Here is the photograph and my story:

Not Much Left To Guard

Mama and I were sitting in a small cafe overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. We had just returned from the last day of cleaning up our family home after the hurricane.  There had been hours spent piling, into a garbage heap, 200 years of our family’s history.

An elegant egret stood as sentry to our grief. Still and noble and ever there.

“I used to think the world ended here and after,  there was nothing else,” Mama said.  She waved her hand into the near distance.

I put my arms around her shoulders and gently pulled her close.  She seemed, for the first time, delicate to me.  About to shatter.

Beyond the egret, shrimp and deep-sea fishing boats were finding their way back to the bayou. The air was crisp and clear.  Fall would come and then winter.  We did not know what spring would show us.

Ellespeth

A Two-Step For My Baby – Flash Fiction

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  So grateful to PJ for hosting this weekly challenge. This week’s photo prompt is provided by Elaine Farrington Johnson. 

Here’s the photograph and my story.  Please follow lil froggy for more stories.

A Two-Step For My Baby

So many attended me, but I didn’t speak for days. People all around the room were speaking. Speaking to me. Touching me. Smiling sadly at me. Sometimes they spoke to each other. It didn’t matter though. Words seemed meaningless. An echo never-ending.

I’d drawn the shades against the light until one bright dawn seared its way into my life. That morning, in the chapel, there were whispered prayers for love and forgiveness. Vigil candles flickered beneath the statue of St. Agnes.

I knew my baby had been like a little lamb that night. Kicking up a two-step. Perhaps she was a sacrifice, but to what?

Ellespeth

My Mother…

My mother has passed. She was 89 years old. I believe that the most important thing she ever did for me was to introduce me, before my teen years, to the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I spent a few years imitating Millay – writing poems of death and betrayal and self-judgement. My mother is also the character Sissy in my Sissy and Buck/Buck and Sissy flash fiction.

Since I’m unable to travel, I’ve asked my youngest sister to read this for me at my mother’s funeral.

The Courage That My Mother Had (by Edna St Vincent Millay)

The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!-
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ellespeth

A Some Sorta Jazzy Flow Entry

Let’s get the update on my recovery out of the way first:
I’m now on my own as far as my right arm and hand are concerned. No more physical therapy for that part of my body. There’s a metal plate in my lower arm, between my wrist and my elbow. It’s still stiff around there, but getting better. I’m able to type for longer periods of time. I can sign my name and write short lists.

Holding onto the railing with both hands, I can walk up 7 steps like a normal person does – almost – and walk back down again. Holding onto the railing with one hand and one finger of the other hand, I can walk backwards up two steps and back down again forwards. I can walk about two blocks twice a day. I cycle on the stationary bike for 15 minutes a day a 5 tension. That’s pretty exciting for me. A corner turned.

I feel more hopeful, but still depressed. My insomnia has worsened. I’ve dealt with both of these issues for years. I know that the sudden life change from being totally active to being in a nursing home and then home still recovering 6 months after a fall has a lot to do with both of these issues resurfacing  Knowing doesn’t help, of course, but it’s good to know.

I’ve decided to keep a handwritten diary. I’ve fancied up the page edges of a Moleskine notebook with brightly colored scrap-book tape…it looks more inviting that way. It’s not going to be some teenaged angst sort of diary…just a recording of the day. Any angst I have going on is certainly released in my poetry and fiction.  Short, brief entries.  (good exercise)

Hmmm…my poetry and fiction – that part of me has suffered most of all in all of this. It’s difficult for my imagination to kick in when all the rest of me is so focused on recovering. So a handwritten diary might help slow me down and reconnect me to what I see beyond me.

Until later,
Ellespeth  ♥

What We Don’t Remember – Fiction

Time again for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  So grateful to PJ for hosting this weekly challenge. This week’s photo prompt is provided by Mark with @any1mark66. Thank you,  Mark!

Please follow little froggy for more stories.

Here is the photograph and my story:

What We Don’t Remember

“Cindy.”  The Inspector smiled at me. Perhaps he was expecting a smile in return – one I did not give him. “Thank you for waiting,” he said.

And well he should be thankful, too. I’d waited, as he’d asked, for 10 minutes in a room with no windows, colored in hues of beige and a slightly darker beige.

I was tired from the day trip my senior group had taken. We’d stopped at one of those road stop places. The sort that sells saltwater taffy and carved statues of local wildlife. This particular one had a lime green alien statue welcoming visitors to the shop.

“Is there anything else you remember about the child?” the inspector asked me.  Apparently, a child had gone missing about the same time our senior van arrived at the road stop.

And that’s when I started crying. I wanted to remember, but I couldn’t.

Ellespeth