The exercise:
Write about: yearning.
It's getting darn chilly here. I saw a handful of snowflakes fluttering down from the clouds at one point this afternoon. Too soon!
Ah well, the fireplace helps soothe the pain.
Mine:
Sitting solemnly at his desk,
Blank pages and trusted pen,
The words refusing to come play
And he can't remember when
Or if they ever did before,
Or if they will again.
Chin resting in an upturned hand,
An idea deep within
Begins aching for escaping,
Crawling beneath his pale skin,
But this constant fear of failure
Will not let him begin.
Yearning
ReplyDeleteAhhh! Her heart literally ached to be with him again. It’d been three whole weeks. Long distance relationships were hard; the adrenalin rush of seeing him at airport arrivals on Friday night was too readily replaced by tears at the departure gate on Sunday evening. A weekend full of fine food and hot air balloon rides in the wine country never quite assuaged the miniscule, tugging ache she carried in her heartstrings. She wondered if he felt the same ache, the...the...the yearning, that she did? Surely he must. He kept coming back.
Next weekend he’d planned ahead. It was her turn to visit him. He had the ring ready, the restaurant booked and the limo on order. She had no idea! She had no misgivings about boarding the airplane, no inclination that she should perhaps not embark on this particular journey...
When he answered his door to the knock of the police officer, his own romantic hunger turned into a physical terror that gripped his gut. When they delivered the news, he dropped the velvet encased box he was holding. The diamond ring inside clattered to the floor. He neither noticed nor cared. Did he yearn for her? Unequivocally yes! And from that fateful day, the yearning never stopped...
@writebrite: that's a very well written piece, with some nicely chosen words and definite feeling to it. It seems a little abrupt in the last paragraph though, where everything is just dumped in the reader's lap, and kind of breaks the image of yearning that you were building up previously. I think I've said this before, but I think you should actually write longer pieces!
ReplyDelete@marc: Snow is lovely, particularly when you don't have to live with it for six months of the year ;-)
I think I must be being picky today, because your poem also finishes in a way that, for me, breaks with the yearning that the rest of the piece was setting up. It's been a very long two days training people in Ireland, and it's not over yet, so perhaps I'll think differently when I re-read these tomorrow.
Yearning
They say that a ghost is a person who had unfinished business before they died. I'd not thought about it until the little boy had drifted through the wall, pursuing something I couldn't see, but perhaps their unfinished business is just with life. A longing to carry on living, that persists into the dark chill of death and pushes them to linger in our world; trying to do things that they did when they were real.
My therapist, a distinguished Viennese gentleman called Dr. Fraud, told me that I was suffering from a futile wish to be a ghost, that I was longing for things that were just out of reach.
Then he prescribed me strychnine tablets.
greg, interesting punchline. yes, i probably could write longer pieces, and do for my own blog sometimes, but i feel that for 'comments' i would rather them short. my third paragraph here was done on purpose to exactly dump the emotion i was building, thus making the yearning more sad, more poignant, IMO :)
ReplyDeletefor greg... the 4th paragraph...
ReplyDelete...and beyond the veil, that thin brane just a nanometre in width, she watched him, day in, day out. Her ghostly form continued to yearn for him, as he did her.
Sometimes she touched him. It registered as a wisp, cobweb fine, on his tanned skin, or as a tickle on his scalp.
Together they yearned, from either side, waiting...waiting for his death, and so to be reunited in spirit once again.
Writebite - great stuff, and I think the addition only makes it better.
ReplyDeleteThough I do understand your desire to keep it shorter in comments. If you ever get really carried away with a prompt and post it on your blog please feel welcome to just leave a link here to your post :)
Greg - yeah, the Irish can do that to you :P
You could have gone a lot of different directions with the ending, but you know I always approve any reference to the good doctor :D
marc, thanks!
ReplyDeletehttp://write-bite.blogspot.com
i tagged all my responses with 'dwp' and reference to ypur blog.
yearning
ReplyDeleteyou want what you don't have
every day until you get it
as much as you think about it you want it
relying on the fact that yet
no matter how hard you try
inside you still yearn for it and
now you have it you don't want it but
giving it away is when you want it most