There was a mystery
To their madness.
An uncanny sense of
Doom.
But she did not flail
Afraid
In darkness,
Whilst she could spot a petal
Bloom.
Instead, she watched
With rapt intention
As life suffused
Their eerie
Gloom.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Uncanny in 39 words
They walked toward the light. The brambles, the thistles, the burrs, the thorns — all attempted to snag and ensnare and scratch and mark them for what would be held as treachery.
Still, they walked. Some of them bare-legged and bleeding. Others somewhat better clothed, but not much better off once flaps of torn fabric opened windows to the ravages of all manner of sharp things.
They walked toward the light. The dark, the fog, the cold, the hunger, the fatigue — all conspired to force them to turn back.
They did not.
Not when the tunnel they had managed digging, spoonful by spoonful of rock-hard soil, hiding the scrabbling sounds under the cover of endless mandatory chanting, could finally accommodate a slithery passage underneath the electrified fence.
They’d been digging it for months.
Waiting. Counting. Hoping. Dreaming. Fighting against those who dismissed the possibility, against those who threatened to give them away, against the weighing down by those who’d surrendered to messages of futility and given up.
It had been a fluke, really. A careless corner of a printed flyer that the wardens did not burn completely. A few lines and enough to give them the potential for a plan.
But they had to destroy the evidence. And not everyone believed.
Sometime even they began having doubts.
When the light arrived, many of them cried. Surreptitiously, of course. Lest the guards see. Lest they be found out.
And when the cold bit deep enough to keep the guards huddled by the watch-station’s stoves, and when the hour was late enough for no more chants to be required, they wriggled, one by one, under and out.
And fled.
Toward the light.
Where the masses congregating in the desert could swallow them. Where they would be hidden in the flocks of floodlighted extras dressed in rags. Where their dust and grime and hollows under eyes, would blend in with the crowds in caked-in dirt and post-apocalyptic make up. Where their actual horror, worse than any movie, could be made less real at last.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto Challenge
Photo: Andrew Buchanan on Unsplash
“It is just a crack,” she said,
“A splinter off of perfection.”
‘Twas more than that, she understood,
Knowing what effort it exacted of her
To keep her direction,
To balance scales just so
They did not tip life
And hope
Into utter disconnection.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: Crack
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
The weight of the world
On his shoulders.
His heart thumps a fatigue
In his chest.
Eons stretch
Since certain with brawn
He sought
With his strength
To impress.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: open topic
Photo: Pixabay on Pexels.com
“Can’t say I’ve known all along,” he said.
She snuggled deep into his lap, safe under the quilt, warmed by his heartbeat, listening to the song of the stars as they marched across the canopy of the world.
A different sky. This was.
The other half of life, perhaps. Better, even, now that she found home.
She, too, hadn’t known. Rotation, yes, but only as rounds of emptied hope.
Though her soul perhaps did know. It must have seen the edge of the world spin, and held on, to keep her whole.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Spin in 92 words
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Cherish every moment
Left
Of light as
Suns will set.
Hold on to the
Deep rewards
Of daylight breathed
Through soul,
And saved.
For Terri’s Sunday Stills Challenge: Daylight Hours
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Wrapping tentative fingers
That become tangled vines
Jungle trees tell the boulder:
“You’re my rock, you are mine.”
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
A blue ghost
Found its way
To the front
Of this porch.
‘Fraid of heights
It clings tight
To the spout
And flower pots.
For One Word Sunday Challenge: Blue
Image credit Gamze Bozkaya via Unsplash
“Hang on tight!” Mermee called
And she launched
Wings unfold
O’er fields
Mountains old.
And below her
I swung
My heart in my throat
Rung
As below me unfolded
Hope and fear, life remolded.
Till claws
Let go
And I fell.
Morning broke
My dream’s spell.
For The MMLM Photo Challenge
Photo: Atara Katz
In the winds
Of turmoil,
Hold on tight
Don’t recoil.
For all change,
Churn and roil,
Shapes the earth
Feeds the soil.
For The Daily Post
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