(Photo: Noita Digital on Unsplash)
The swirl of white had gotten
In her eye.
Placed a tickle in her
Throat.
The door would close.
The chairs will sleep with bottoms
Against table
Tops.
There would be no more
Early morns.
No damp sponge
To erase all of yesterdays’
Chalk.
For the dVerse quadrille poetry challenge: chalk in 44 words
“Did she see you take Butter?”
Hailey chuckled, “Nah.”
The stable dame was notorious for imbibing at lunch and for the sprawled-in-chair-nap that followed. If you timed it correctly, you could saddle a horse, enjoy a ride, and return before the woman stirred awake.
“What if she found out?” Dora squirmed on Rocky’s back, and the gelding raised his head in admonition. “Sorry, Rocky,” she placed a palm on the equine’s neck.
Hailey shrugged. “Not like Butter will tattle. Right, Butter?”
The horse neighed in return, and the girls giggled.
Rocky snorted.
“Nor you, Rocky. You ain’t a snitch,” Hailey agreed.
The mare trotted languidly. She had to be just as happy for the outing, let alone with Rocky. If it weren’t for Hailey’s family’s recent trouble, and the sale of Butter to Mrs. Jolly’s stable, the horses would still be grazing together, as they had from colt and filly.
For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
“Close your eyes. Feel the levers of the earth move with you,” Moria deposited the words like diamonds lined on velvet cloth.
Lianne obeyed the first. Tried hard for the second. But all she felt were the tremors in her body, bare skin shuddering against penetrating morning chill. And the fear.
“Breathe in the cold, breathe out the worry.” The old woman’s voice affected little compassion, yet there was no shaming in it. Just instruction.
Lianne tried, but her shaking only intensified. Perhaps I am not ready, she fretted.
“You are ready,” Moria stated.
Lianne gasped. Could her mentor read her mind?
“No, but I’ve seen enough initiates.”
The elder’s chuckle, puncturing the solemn task, somehow eased Lianne’s mind. Her body calmed. Her eyes relaxed behind the wrap. Her toes curled around the softness of the mossy ground. The bottom step offered a damp welcome.
“Better. Now climb.”
For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
“This place will never do,” Aaron shook his head.
“It’ll have to,” Ella tucked the edges of frustration back into the crevices that practice had made almost foolproof. Almost. One could not get complacent.
She’d seen what happened when one did, and the cost was never worth the temptation of release.
“We’ll make it work,” she added before Aaron could add argument to what they both knew will have to be managed anyway.
The steep plot of thicket-covered land was all they had. A measly inheritance, perhaps, but better than the debtor’s jail … and the ways one had to pay debts with one’s body. Piecemeal. By the hour. By the man. They could neither of them survive it again.
“It is a long way down,” Aaron acquiesced. “The stairs are rotted.”
“A longer way up for those who do not know the path,” Ella smiled. “We’ll do fine.”
For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
(Photo: Simona Roubkova on Unsplash)
“What are you going to do with this thing?”
Leah shrugged, and watched as Marty circled the addition to their household, arms behind his back in what she thought of as his ‘Wannabee Inspector General.’
“It is useless,” he muttered.
“It is cute,” she said, and chuckled at the horror on his face. “In its own way, at least.”
For to be fair, the poor creature would win no beauty contests. Patchy hair, droopy eyelid, bloated abdomen. But there was a trusting glint in the blue eye, and a gentleness that sought her heart and hooked it.
“You’d do it mercy to put it down.”
“I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being,” Leah challenged. “If we can be of help, why not even try?”
She reached down to pet the pup. “Her name’s Pat.”
Prosery prompt: “I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.” — Wisława Szymborska, “Possibilities”
For the dVerse prosery challenge
(Photo: Stéphane Juban on Unsplash)
When the cold gripped hard
And pulled life from the sinews
Of the earth,
And when the wind screamed wild
Among the emptied branches
Overhead,
She’d seek the warm embrace
Of the inglenook’s fireplace
And write a book
Of summer’s heat
Inside her
Head.
For the dVerse quadrille poetry challenge: Inglenook
“You coming?” Betty scanned the space to make sure nothing was forgotten, slung her pack over her shoulder, and headed for the door.
“Nope.”
“Are you serious?!” she swung around to stare at Ron.
“Yep.”
Her arms began to bend and she was just about to press her palms to her hips, when she exhaled, shook her head, and stuck her hands in her jacket pockets instead.
That’s what he wanted. Another argument. Another delay.
Not this time.
“Suit yourself,” she said.
His incredulous intake of breath was almost worth a glance. She resisted the urge.
“You’re a coward!” his words chased her in a continuation of the arguments they’d had. “I’m not a quitter. I’m gonna stay and see this slump through, and when you come crawling back, I will not let you in.”
She drove away.
The town had since dissolved but apparently Ron still waits.
Sort of.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
She didn’t need to be quite so blunt.
Not that she ever did mince words. Or hold back actions.
It was what he loved about her. It was also what became exhausting. Fending off arguments. Splitting hairs.
He wasn’t averse to a good conversation, but was it really necessary to have confrontations about the best-by-date of parsley or whether T-shirts needed to be folded a certain way or whether such-and-such celebrity looked better before their latest procedure or if they ought to order red or yellow apples?
“You’re apathetic to the world!” she’d accused. “If you don’t care about small things, how would you care about the bigger issues?”
His sigh only infuriated her.
Perhaps it’s better that she left. But did she really have to hang her purple shoe, the one he’d gotten her, outside his window?
She used to be his princess. Now he was a stepsister.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
They rose in steady hum of
Motors aiming to break
Clouds
And dispersed the waves upon the
Sand as life skittered
Aground.
They pointed nose into the
Sky with souls holding on well
And fast
As engines revved anew
And headed home
At last.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: sky
Photo by Eric Muhr on Unsplash
She was not a country bumpkin
Though she aspired to
Be one.
So she dressed the part
And practiced
How to walk and talk
In twang,
And she hoped to look
Uncultured
To the folk stopping
In store,
So they’d believe
She was
Hardcore.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: bum
tucked away in the mountains
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