City Photography

Photo courtesy and copyright property of Dale Rogerson, provided for the express purpose of prompting the Friday Fictioneers community this week, as orchestrated by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

Do you see me?

Blurred out in the forefront
of your picturesque scene,

do you see me?

I am the ingrained graffiti
crystallized within the cellular walls
of your conscience,
disgendered by your scrubbing
clean the city litter
in the corners of expanded shadow,
but voiced with an all too familiar
vulnerability
because in the blanked space

you see me.

You see
the distorted angles of your shape
in the contrasting cast
of an outside light
you imagined haloing
your silhouette
when it all ever did was threaten
anyone’s chance
that they might some day
be able to

see me.

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Myrrha

Photo courtesy and copyright property of Roger Bultot, provided for the express purpose of prompting Rochelle Wisoff-Fields‘ Friday Fictioneers drabbling community. Other works of 100 words may be found and/or contributed here.

The tree is knotted with tears.
They smell as bitter as they appear,
gobs of gummed up sorrow
that failed to fall
past an empty, round swell.
The yawning hollow’s warm
and miserable, beautiful
and tragic — a product of misshaped affection.

I want to climb inside, but can’t
figure out my own dimensions.

Myrrha, could you have been
as disastrous as Orpheus sang?
He tried to defy death
in the name of his love
before being rent into islands
by a scorned forest of women.
Only then did he know Eurydice again,

when vines and bark climbed
over our hollows.

Angiogram

Photo courtesy and copyright property of Ronda Del Boccio, provided for the express purpose of prompting Rochelle Wisoff-Fields‘ Friday Fictioneers drabble challenge. Others’ efforts may be found here.

The heat’s sudden, like the dark lightning streaks veining across the bleach-clean monitor. The sensation stagnates, though the iodine still flows through the channels of my heart.

Yesterday, I waded through the murk of a floodplain. The languid glow of the muddy sunrise warmed my ears as it shimmered across the pools of my son’s eyes. He’d tried for so long to get me out there, to let my line drift free in the easy current.

I can’t help thinking about the paramedics slogging through the marsh as I watch the darkness puddling. What’d the dawn look like to them?

Ramses

Photo courtesy and copyright property of Sandra Crook provided for the express purpose of prompting Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers drabble challenge. To supply your own 100 words and/or read the other entries, the link here will lead the way.

Square after two-ply square curl around gartered socks, press against khaki creases, bind my belted belly button. My daughter chides her children when they look to begin a second roll and pin my hands across my chest, but I will a final motion with my wrist dismissing her displeasure. They pass the full spool back and forth as I rediscover the difficulty of coaxing my back to let it uncoil with ease and my daughter returns to some electronic distraction. Layering my chin, the kids permit a deeper memory when our eyes lock before mine are wrapped with funerary contentment.

Dolce Strokes

Photo prompt courtesy of Anshu Bhojnagarwala for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields‘ Friday Fictioneers. Others’ efforts can be found below.

The music of her touch resonates through the stone. She traces the curvature of its information with pianissimo fingers the way she shyly strummed the song of our first dance on my shoulders.

Notes swirled with pinks and blues and greys play to the tune of Devoted, a spectrum of experience buoyed by the notion. An acrid dolore registers from Father, a title in staccato she argued against including, though she ultimately had no control.

With dolce strokes of her tender chisel, she etches and Husband, then caresses her amendment and tucks the marriage license I’d prepared into a bouquet.

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The Itch and Burn

Photo courtesy and copyright property of C.E. Ayr lent for the use of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields‘ Friday Fictioneers writing prompt group. Join in as a contributor or reader below.

We blamed it on his allergies, the itch and burn of his eyes contagious. Tributaries of tears emptied in the bay of space between our bodies, a gap more distant than we know how to mend.

I knew he was allergic, but he insisted; said it’d be nice to have some little critter busying around the house again. We thought it’d give life to the space we can’t fill.

He refuses to take medication; says he’s fine. I’ve gotten rid of the cat, but the tears still stream, and my eyes itch and burn every time I look at him.

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Mattering

Photo prompt copyright and courtesy of Jean L. Hays expressly for the purposes of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers community. Others’ contributions related to this prompt can be found via the above link.

It’s a haven for squatters, an existence altogether abandoned. Every element of it’s lost like us, save for the rotary phone preserved from early pillages and later pilgrimages. The ring is nostalgic, and we let it jingle while lapsing into fantasies of being remembered. Or wanted.

Once, when the memory of mattering hurt too much, I answered the call. His voice was fragile, too delicate to carry through the speaker with any authority behind the order.

When I showed up at his crumbling doorstep, the sandwich bought elsewhere out of my own worm-eaten pocket, he thanked me. And I, him.