Before and Now

Today Pegman took us to beautiful Varanasi, India. Typical of me, I found the most depressing picture in a collection of beauties and wrote a down-hearted 151-word story. (Sorry I went over my 150-word limit.)

Before the wars. Before the waters rose. Before the children and elders died. Before. Before. Before.
Before now, our city was full of laughter, the scent of herbs and exotic spices, music and life’s noisy clatter.

Our buildings were colorful. Deep pinks, brilliant oranges, gentle greens.
Women wore dresses sewn from gossamer silk and finely woven cotton. And smelled of Jasmine tea.
Wisemen grew long white beards and dispensed knowledge collected throughout the ages.
For three-hundred-years, there was no turmoil.

Then the storms came. Storms filled with lightning, thunder and too much rain. Storms between husbands, wives, and children.
Storms of unwanted people arriving from all over the world to flood our city with discontent for it is built on the last piece of land remaining above water.

There is nowhere to put them. They take what they want, especially our happiness, and give nothing in return.
So, this is now.

Until We Are No More

Pegman took us to Sambor Prei Kuk Temple, Cambodia today. What an amazing place. I wandered around the grounds until I found this amazing picture. My 119-word story follows.

 

Oh, we are a pair are we not?
Wound around one another’s lives
One of us limber and forgiving
The other solid and stern

We laugh over the details
of our failures
We cry over the unforgivable losses
Children
Parents
Homes
Jobs
Joy
Not because either of us is to blame
but because there is no one to blame

We cling and claw our way
through days
And languish in our nights
Making love
or fighting
It doesn’t matter which

Because each brilliant dawn
we awaken with the hope
that one of us will
Let go
Cling tighter
Love harder
Turn away

Or we will both
remain the same
and get on with it
Until we are no more

The Last of Her Kind

Tonight in a town square lit by the moon, the Friday Fictioneers gather to write 100-word stories. Thanks, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields and Dale Rogerson for this thought provoking photo.

 

 

The day had been too long, hours creeping by with the slow tock, tock, tock of her heart. Lizbeth owned no watch, nor could she read the shadows of the sun’s passing. Although she had promised, Mother hadn’t taken time to teach the meaning of shifting winds. And after saying, “You’ll learn to read the waters,” Father disappeared. When brother Paul kissed her, saying, “I’ll return for you,” she believed him, too. Six-year-olds trust so easily.

The day had been full of screams. Now, hidden in the shadows, Lizbeth does her best to interpret the silence crawling across the night.

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Almost

Wednesday/Friday has rolled around once again. This is my 100 word submission for Friday Fictioneers inspired by sad news reported on the radio last week. Do they ever report good news? Every now and then, I suppose. On that note . . .

They’d left Myanmar on Nakaji’s fishing boat – just the three of them.
“Stupid idea,” Swimon had shouted.
“You got $300?” Nakaji had asked.
High seas, enormous freighters then the big storm. They lost everything – the child, each other.

Which way to go now? Nakaji fidgeted at the crossroads.
He recognized her star pasted to the pole – proving Swimon had made it here alive.

People hurried by whispering “Arrest” “Riff-raff”
What did that mean?
Across the street clogged with cars, he saw her beautiful face. Called, “Swimon!”
He stepped from the curb.
“No you don’t!” Police. Handcuffs. Swimon disappeared.

Wait

This was inspired by a school shooting on October 24, 2014. A fourteen year old boy – who apparently had everything in his favor including family ties, strong tribal connections, a winning smile, intelligence and a good sense of humor – shot four fellow students and himself. He and another are dead. Two girls are alive but so disfigured they have not yet been identified and one young man may have lost his jaw. What is it about young heartbreak that drives children to such measures? (Remember, this boy had one foot merely dangling over the boundary between childhood and the world of a teenager, and was years away from becoming a man.)

Son- Before the Story
i am broken
how will i mend?
how is it possible
to shine in her eyes
one day
and be invisible to her
the next?
I cannot sweat it off

Father – Before the Story
just wait
you have loved her one short year
a nano-second, a blink
there will be another girl
many other girls
that will shine in your eyes
take time
wait

The Story
there is no waiting
son hides the gun
in his day pack
between a sandwich
and her class picture

lunchtime – eight shots
two dead
four disfigured for life