Sunday, October 20, 2013

Three Five-Sentence Stories-GBE2#127

Submitted for GBE2 Week#127

He Guards The Echoes of His Memory

Forty years and a day ago, he had it all--laughter, love,youth, and a family of warmth joined safely together in his living room . Nobody ever sees a tornado coming from their blind side. He didn't watch the weather channel that morning before he rolled out of the driveway. Something the sky was brewing was on its way, and it appeared as dark as the end of time...as eerie as a ghostly fist repeatedly pounding the same dreadful chord.

 Forty years and a day later, the neighborhood children take turns daring each other to startle the long-bearded man with dusty eyes, who stares all day and night at the broken-down shack  that so wearily leans over the edge of a dead-end street; but he hears and sees no distractions...he'll never leave or lose sight of home again.

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Runner

Every evening she takes long runs that lead to anywhere but there. If she runs fast enough, she could almost be the invincible wind...nothing could ever snatch the wind when it flies through the dark. A hope beats beneath her chest that this is the final run that will put the screaming daylight to rest. She knows if she turns to look back at the long stretch of road behind her, she'll see bruises everywhere, and that solid white line will become a scar that connects the past to now.

Suddenly, a pale little girl--with the woman's same scared sound, though much younger voice --
hurries and catches up to the runner just as she collapses near the bridge; kneeling beside her, she asks with good-bye eyes, to be rocked to sleep one last time.

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Autumn's Paint

She climbed as far north as she could up October's tree, and waited patiently until December--but she still felt the same when the first snow finally came. She shook her hair in the brisk air hoping her thoughts would drop with fall. The tag on her clothes described what little girls were made of, and the fancy ladies they must grow to be. The mirror on the wall told her she should love a boy or not at all. Now Autumn has run out of paint, and it doesn't matter, because changing her true colors was never a possibility.





Friday, October 11, 2013

Today is Okay


Today all is okay

Death stayed
deep in the black
Of the last funeral
And did not come forward
To make geese
push through the freckles
Of my smooth skin
With its cold breath

Today the sky
 is soft
And safe

All the souls
Have placed their blankets down for a picnic
None have booked a flight

And all I see
Is an angel
Peeking through
The opening of a cloud
To check on me
And she leaves
With her smile
Because I’ve got plenty

Because I am at rest
Because some days
Loyalty shines brighter
Than a cloudless sun
Stronger than the endurance
of a summer’s blazing day

And I can bask in it
With no burning risk

 And I can sing
all the things I love about it

And pluck every blooming chance
I once walked by
 with closed eyes
through a dreamy spring


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Buried Word

There was a word
Laying on the silence
Of a body of sorrow

Unmoved by the wind
Whispering its strong concern

There was a word
Stuck in dark seclusion
Unmotivated
by the determination
Of dawn’s touch

There was a word
that couldn’t find a voice
To lift it to its heaven
To rescue it
From the layers of uncertainty
Shoveled over it like a grave

All it could do
Was remain a slave
To nothing