going to try bi weekly. the last photo post is still open for writing until further notice.

Are any of you interested in continuing the project? the last three or four weeks have not been written on at all. i know we've been busy, i just want to know if we're all too busy or think i should scrap the idea altogether.

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.

Week Four

Week Four, April 24th.

You have until next Friday, May 1st, 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.

ALSO
do you know any other writers that would be possibly interested in becoming a part of this project? don't hesitate to tell me-- i'm open to inviting anyone who wants to write. pass the link along in the circles of writers you know, and tell them that if they want to join, just email me: graffiti.grunge at gmail dot com.

Careful, I (want to) say. Don’t you understand? No, of course not. There are eggs behind my eyes, and that’s why I’m afraid to think, to obliterate them with the thousands of simultaneously-running trains in my head. No, I can’t sleep; if my eyelash fences are erected then there will be dark and cold and the eggs will die. Forgive me for crying, it’s just that they’re pecking their way out now, and eggshells and eggteeth and eggteeth and eggshells are all I can think—oh, here they are.

You can’t see yet, no, they aren’t ready. Stop talking, those breezes from your lips—stop, they’re turning into cold winds! You’ll knock them out of my head if you keep that up, and then they’ll die! I won’t be able to touch them again!

I can’t tell you this, but they aren’t for you. I’m disguising my dreams in feathers so they can get away before you can crush them; they have such small, hollow bones after all. You’ve seen the fragments of shell come out of my tear ducts, you know something’s changed. You’re always trying to gust it out of me, but you don’t really want it. It’s just that I’ve never kept something from you, you’ve always had all of my thoughts, all of me; it’s not that you’re anticipating something beautiful from my mind.

You don’t know what it used to be like; I didn’t always think in steel and coal. These engines and miles of track lacerating the scenery in every direction used to be the shuddering of butterflies and the paws of foxes and the dashing of stars. You did this to me.

And now I’ve finally incubated something pure and fluttering again. The birds behind my eyes just need to be fully developed before they make their way out, so they can immediately take to skies beyond your grasp.

I’m not sure which sight will be more majestic, the avian visions soaring from my lips or the empty shock parting yours.

echo; i'm just an echo.

"my heart is a bird,
but my ribs are a cage..."
//


i'm leaving again, he says.
that's as much warning as he gives before he steps off his perch and begins to claw his way up my throat. i choke on his exit, knowing that it will be even harder to breath when he's gone, even though my chest will be empty, spacious. the sound of my ribs clattering together will echo once he makes his daring escape, they'll resound like thousands of drums, clickety-clacking, the sound coming out my nose and ears. it will give my words a percussion accompaniment that's unrivaled by any orchestra in the city.
"forgive [clickety clickety click click snap] me [click clack clackety click clack], love. [rattle, clickclickclick.]"

you'll hear it, and know the truth.
i don't want you to know that i'm hollow like an old log, except the rings in me don't have the history. i don't want that echo to reach your ears. i don't want to see your eyes widen with the realization that this sweet fluttering thing has furiously fled.

i face you and it's like slow motion. my heart should be beating in my chest, my throat, my ears.

click, clack, my ribs say, as if responding to my anxiousness.



cliick, claack,

cliick, claack.

clickclack.

take a dip in the cesspool

Bump, bump, bump, bump, goes the drum in my chest. Beating in time with the fear resonating throughout my body, exploding through my trembling fingertips. While the darkness swallows me whole, I can hardly wrap my mind around the pit of acidity waiting for me at the bottom of this 10-inch pipe. My wings have broken and I can no longer fly, fly away from this place. A place only in my head that no one knows, this is where evil grows, and where the monsters under your bed reside when you don’t believe anymore. This is where innocence is lost and seeing is believing. Swallowed by the greedy mouth of reality, escape is no longer plausible. Fear is floating further and further away from the slowing drum, oxygen is no longer a necessity, and freedom is finally here.

Three

Week Three, April 17th.

You have until next Friday, April 24th, 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.

reconstruction

oh! boy, you'll thank me for this one day.

i've meticulously taken
all that flesh and bone and turned you into
someone much more
useful,
pertinent,
stable,
predictable.

i've fixed you.

i peeled off skin like a
tangerine in the summer heat
wiping my hands as i worked;
putting you in that metal shell
was the best decision we ever made.

the only thing i couldn't save was your
pumping, feebly sensitive yet explosive heart.

but trust me darling, you are better off without.

because i cannot love you forever,
i remember once,
before you were all dials and
lights, i told you,
"having a heart is like an evolutionary step

in the wrong direction."

you cried when i did,
and i'm positive i could feel
that explosive heart
wringing itself around your ribs
to try and escape,
kill me for what i was calling it.
i could feel you
wanting to, too. but
that anti-darwinistic,

four chambered,
emotional,

sissy son-of-a-bitch

just wasn't having any of it.


instead you just cried, and loved me all the same.
but i keep reminding you,

you will be
grateful,
later.

lost among the pages of you.

your smile, it's beautiful.
and I dont even mean the physical
looks of it.
just the idea, the concept,
makes me blush.

you're happy; that's what I live for.
it's not even your features that
pull me in to your magneton.

you are beautiful like a well written book.
strong and mysterious on the outside.
drawing me in.
making me long,
desire,
to know what's inside.

I just want to read the story of your life.
I need to get lost in the
fine written imagery
that makes you amazing.

when it comes down to it,
we are all the same.
our features may vary,
but we are as the water;
no matter where it is,
uniform and constant.

we live our lives like robots.
repeating this monotonous life
over and over in our minds.

to the naked eye, we are the same.
we look the same. we sound the same.
we laugh and mourn alike.

but when i look at you, i see so much more.
i just want to sit in a comfortable spot,
and read the story scribed in your personality.

I just mirror a smile back to you,
as I reread my favorite phrase,
I love you. I love you. I love you.