Week Nine

Week Nine, May 29th.

You have until next Friday, June 5th, to write a piece of any kind about the photo. The rules are that simple-- literal, abstract, short story, poem, prose, etc. All styles are welcome, just use the photo as a starting point. After Friday, you may not post writing from previous weeks' photos.
Feel free to write multiple pieces if you feel that inspired, although you aren't required to write every week. You won't be removed as an author unless you go four consecutive weeks without writing or contacting me at all, or you ask to be removed.


[ps, late again. i know. my apologies-- for the last two weeks i have been house-sitting without internet.]

Week Eight

Week Eight, May 22nd.

You have until next Friday, May 29th, to write a piece of any kind about the photo. The rules are that simple-- literal, abstract, short story, poem, prose, etc. All styles are welcome, just use the photo as a starting point. After Friday, you may not post writing from previous weeks' photos.
Feel free to write multiple pieces if you feel that inspired, although you aren't required to write every week. You won't be removed as an author unless you go four consecutive weeks without writing or contacting me at all, or you ask to be removed.

[ps. i am well aware, and very sorry, that this was actually posted on sunday, may 24th.]

Week Seven

Week Seven, May 15th.
[Image from FFFFOUND, original creator not known.]

Also, to see the fullsize image, right click and select 'view image.'

You have until next Friday, May 22nd, to write a piece of any kind about the photo. The rules are that simple-- literal, abstract, short story, poem, prose, etc. All styles are welcome, just use the photo as a starting point. After Friday, you may not post writing from previous weeks' photos.
Feel free to write multiple pieces if you feel that inspired, although you aren't required to write every week. You won't be removed as an author unless you go four consecutive weeks without writing or contacting me at all, or you ask to be removed.

Choppy porch thoughts for a Friday morning.

It’s always seemed so ambitious
to me, the planting of flowers.
Not until do little nothings
grow into somethings, they grow
into beautiful somethings.

(You bury them, dare them
to make a grave
into a crib,
to grow with no affection,
as no human could…
and they do!
Limbless, somehow
they shove the soil away
and enter the world-
bashful at first,
but comely and strong.)

Maybe if I plant newspapers
in my garden, they will grow
into beauty instead of war.

After all, have you ever seen an ugly flower?

News

Here lies nostalgia
rusty and forgotten.
Reading is a sin,
learning is forbidden.
Hidden outsiders,
they find no retribution
in faded pages
of black and white



Memories.

Week Six

Week Six, May 8th.
To read this full story, click here.

You have until next Friday, May 15th, to write a piece of any kind about the photo. The rules are that simple-- literal, abstract, short story, poem, prose, etc. All styles are welcome, just use the photo as a starting point. After Friday, you may not post writing from previous weeks' photos.
Feel free to write multiple pieces if you feel that inspired, although you aren't required to write every week. You won't be removed as an author unless you go four consecutive weeks without writing or contacting me at all, or you ask to be removed.

Nightmarers.

I watched an invisible monster twist and contort your body this morning- some form of torture for a crime I’ve no doubt you committed. I thought maybe I should wake you up, but I was afraid the monster moving your bones around could use them to rearrange my own skeleton, so I left you to your punishment. When you finally woke up, the monster disguised itself as tears to escape your body. I was terrified.

“I dreamt you started smoking,” you said.

I could imagine smoke nooses dangling from my fingers…but I couldn’t imagine why your black heart would care about my black lungs.

“You started smoking; you blew smoke in my face when I told you to stop. You said you didn’t want me anymore, you didn’t care about anything. None of it, the beauty you’re always seeing, trying to share. You walked away, and I couldn’t follow you. The path you took consisted of smoke, and it blew away behind you. There wasn’t ground anymore,” you continued.

I just stared at you. I wanted to tell you about the crescent moons blooming grey beneath your bottom eyelashes; how your dreams kept falling out and getting stuck in them because you didn’t sleep enough. I wanted to tell you that while you weren’t sleeping I was having dreams about frantically trying to lock doors you were waiting behind with cougars. “He’s friendly, I promise! Please open the door, darling; I want you to meet him, you’d get along so well!” you’d shout while the mountain cat splintered the barrier between us.

But I didn’t. I just made coffee so we’d never have to sleep again.

mo[u]rning.

it's four fifty three in the afternoon, and i'm having my morning coffee alone. i'm not sure what startled me awake, but here i am.

you're long gone, i know. i can feel your absence more than i could ever feel your presence.


i've been holding this cigarette so long it's gone out in my hand, burned all the way to the filter. i go to take a long drag and stop as i notice.
"fuck," i say out loud. it seems to resonate in this empty apartment.

i didn't think you'd ever really go through with leaving, though you've threatened it for years.
it started innocently enough. sitting at breakfast, you adjusting your tie, looking sadly at me.
"there's got to be more than this, eliza," you'd say.
"maybe there isn't. maybe shredded wheats and yesterday's coffee is all the world really has to offer," i'd respond, smiling a little.

i should have known you'd go and find out.
it's been one year, six months, and three days since you left. except, i'm not counting. i'd tell you how many hours if i didn't know it would give me away.

every morning, as soon as i wake up, i have my coffee and my cigarette, and i wait for you to come home. some days, i don't wake up at all.
money comes in unmarked envelopes, and i know it's from you. you never put a return address, and though i've learned to know better than to expect it, i still tear through the envelope in hopes of finding a letter.
sometimes i can smell your cologne on the bills, and i imagine you, in some far off place, looking a little bit older, a little bit more worldly, tucking them in and mailing them. i imagine that you plan to return someday. that maybe, you're counting down the days the same way i am counting them up. all of your new friends, wherever you are, always get to hear about "oh, when i get home to eliza..."
i wish you would. sometimes i think of getting on with my life, like you have. sometimes i dream of finding the 'more to the world' that you always talked about, or at least trying to find you. i suppose that i didn't need more as long as i knew that you were coming home and kissing my forehead as i slept, and carrying me into our room from the couch where i'd fallen asleep waiting for you. i didn't need more if i already had it all.

i finish my coffee and go back to bed, drowning the dreams swimming in my mind.

last saturday, 8:02pm

"don't fucking tell me what to do. you always think you can.
goddamnit, i'm my own person. i don't need you.
so stop it. stoppitstoppitstoppit."

"fuck.
i'm sorry.
i don't... know... what got into me."

"do you mind if i smoke?"

"jane-"

"what?
what is it? what else do you have to say?
please, humour me."

"i don't need the attitude...
i just-"

"do you have a light?"

"you always do this."

"do what? what is it that i always do?
what makes me so fucking intolerable?
i don't know why im even-"

"i love you"

"what..
what am i supposed to do with that?
goddamnit, is that supposed to make everything better?
is that supposed to be some shining fucking light that washes it all away?"

"no i just thought..."

"what did you think?
that i would drop everything, run weeping into your arms, look into your eyes and-
fucking hell, where is my lighter?
look, i'm not going to deal with this.
i have to go."

"i'll still love you"





"...bye"

Week Five

Week Five, May 1st.
To see more by this artist, please visit here.

You have until next Friday, May 8th, to write a piece of any kind about the photo. The rules are that simple-- literal, abstract, short story, poem, prose, etc. All styles are welcome, just use the photo as a starting point. After Friday, you may not post writing from previous weeks' photos.
Feel free to write multiple pieces if you feel that inspired, although you aren't required to write every week. You won't be removed as an author unless you go four consecutive weeks without writing or contacting me at all, or you ask to be removed.

hearts, menageries, and bible stories.

Daniel, you said you were Daniel. And I believed you. Can you blame me? Anyone with Cat’s Eye Apatite for eyes and grace water would envy must be favored by God. No one could touch you… Certainly a divine force was swooning over you just as I was. I didn’t for a moment consider that the distant reverence the rest of the world maintained might be because they were wise, or at least smart enough to be scared. You made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but I thought it was because there was an electricity to us.

Watching (though not hearing) you pad around my kitchen, I knew you didn’t belong here. I wanted to give you the world, but from between my ribs where you couldn’t get it for yourself. No one would dare withhold anything from you, even a planet and all of its life and beauty- so I would have to keep you behind bone bars to be able to offer you anything. Oh, and how I wanted to give you everything.

But there wasn’t enough room in my ribcage for you to live, I knew this. So instead of caging you, I gave you a key. You could choose to come and go in my chest as you pleased.

I should have known.

You can’t give wild animals the key to your heart; they’ll just eat the whole thing.

Leo, you are Leo. And you would have eaten Daniel’s heart out if God hadn’t held your mouth shut. Me, on the other hand—I’m not a blessed servant of a mighty cosmic force that can hold jaws shut. I wanted you in my ribcage, and you cleared it out nicely.