So sorry to hear your news, thank you for sharing and wishing you clear sailing ahead. Your prompt is so very apt and potent. Here's what I can share today.
Lessons In Chaos
A storm’s a comin’. It won't last forever. No place is exempt, no soul untouched, no living creatures escape. Run for cover, allow nature to have its way. If protected, I'll wait and watch from as close as I can get to stay vigilant, all lit up. A storm is a teacher I haven't met yet. A teacher of submission carrying a whip. Give me shelter or else I'll take a beating, perhaps even perish. The old or weak ones thrash about in howling winds, days numbered, turned to hours or minutes in a flash by a crack of lightening. But a soul isn't uprooted like tender plants and brittle trees along the river's edge. When tossed by barometric twists of fate, my free-form spirit floats like a sailing cloud as I hear crumbling at the brink. Darkened during unfathomable upheaval and destruction below I bide my time, learning from futile lessons in chaos. Until dissipated by eventual calm where clarity, like the rising sun, shines through my broken wings.
Oh, so sorry to hear. Given the number of federal jobs in my area of MD, I hear this every day now. Be well.
Here's mine. No idea where it came from, but after I saw the prompt I read the rest of your post and this was what happened.
268 words
Sometimes words are hard, so twig spends the night
A long storm - fierce with pride in all its rhymes and brittle lights - blows out the night. Witches’ wind and big branches break in my bedroom window, put a twig on my pillow. Wet, cold, briny. Twig asks if it can spend the night. I smell its bark and say of course, not sure at all that I’m awake or what I have agreed to. I’m living in liminal. Convex thoughts, the world’s a mess, unfindable words, but I’m curious. So I ask twig, do you miss your tree, now that you’re blown off? Does it worry you that all tree’s roots reside below and forever? – for me, that would mean a kind of death – and tree’s branches, all the twigs, do they love the roots, have they even met? Do they kiss, can they talk? Does the trunk hold your heart?
There’s no response to any of this but the wind picks up so I go on. Twig, I want to know, is this really me who is here? do “I” exist? By that I mean is this voice mine, can I make beauty with my words, or am I just a borrower of verbs?
Twig seems to understand we will not kiss tonight. But the wind calms and twig speaks kindly: take your heart out, put it here. I will scrape it raw with all the frozen wreckage of yourself and you must watch. But then, the sun. We’ll place your heart in the middle of the poem. Write from there.
I'm sorry for your husband's job loss, and for how this impacts you and your whole family. Been there. Still there. Trying to view these endings as the universe removing things that no longer serve us to leave space for something better.
Sorry to hear about your husband's job loss. That really sucks. Hope something good comes from it. 💓
Drythinderstorms? Wbh 222
The Storm Before the Storm (630 words--I lost track of the time so this probably was closer to 15 minutes).
So sorry to hear your news, thank you for sharing and wishing you clear sailing ahead. Your prompt is so very apt and potent. Here's what I can share today.
Lessons In Chaos
A storm’s a comin’. It won't last forever. No place is exempt, no soul untouched, no living creatures escape. Run for cover, allow nature to have its way. If protected, I'll wait and watch from as close as I can get to stay vigilant, all lit up. A storm is a teacher I haven't met yet. A teacher of submission carrying a whip. Give me shelter or else I'll take a beating, perhaps even perish. The old or weak ones thrash about in howling winds, days numbered, turned to hours or minutes in a flash by a crack of lightening. But a soul isn't uprooted like tender plants and brittle trees along the river's edge. When tossed by barometric twists of fate, my free-form spirit floats like a sailing cloud as I hear crumbling at the brink. Darkened during unfathomable upheaval and destruction below I bide my time, learning from futile lessons in chaos. Until dissipated by eventual calm where clarity, like the rising sun, shines through my broken wings.
Wordcount 169
Thank you for the sweet note and for sharing your micro this week, Cynthia!
Oh, so sorry to hear. Given the number of federal jobs in my area of MD, I hear this every day now. Be well.
Here's mine. No idea where it came from, but after I saw the prompt I read the rest of your post and this was what happened.
268 words
Sometimes words are hard, so twig spends the night
A long storm - fierce with pride in all its rhymes and brittle lights - blows out the night. Witches’ wind and big branches break in my bedroom window, put a twig on my pillow. Wet, cold, briny. Twig asks if it can spend the night. I smell its bark and say of course, not sure at all that I’m awake or what I have agreed to. I’m living in liminal. Convex thoughts, the world’s a mess, unfindable words, but I’m curious. So I ask twig, do you miss your tree, now that you’re blown off? Does it worry you that all tree’s roots reside below and forever? – for me, that would mean a kind of death – and tree’s branches, all the twigs, do they love the roots, have they even met? Do they kiss, can they talk? Does the trunk hold your heart?
There’s no response to any of this but the wind picks up so I go on. Twig, I want to know, is this really me who is here? do “I” exist? By that I mean is this voice mine, can I make beauty with my words, or am I just a borrower of verbs?
Twig seems to understand we will not kiss tonight. But the wind calms and twig speaks kindly: take your heart out, put it here. I will scrape it raw with all the frozen wreckage of yourself and you must watch. But then, the sun. We’ll place your heart in the middle of the poem. Write from there.
Thank you for your kind words, Thomason, and for sharing your work this week! Feel free to share a title if one comes to you, too. 🌱
the title is actually the line at the top, sorry it may be too long. Thomasin
Got it! And it is wonderful!
I'm sorry for your husband's job loss, and for how this impacts you and your whole family. Been there. Still there. Trying to view these endings as the universe removing things that no longer serve us to leave space for something better.
Thank you Laurie! Yes, agree 100%!