February 7, 2019 Anna Leave a comment
All around me, black and white
Your presence gives me vibrant sight
Clutter of broken dreams within
Your laugh somehow makes me grin
Stifling silence all around
You come in and bring sound
Life's pages dissolve to ashes
But I'm distracted by dancing lashes
Rain chilling me to the bone
You hold my hand, I'm not alone
Inside fire burns
Black and white to color turns
Since this is the month of hearts, romance, and overpriced chocolates, I thought I'd make this month's poem about the strength a significant other brings.
This little poem was inspired by my boyfriend. Through all the rainy days last year brought me, he was there to kindle a fire. He definitely brought color to my black-and-white world. 😉
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September 6, 2018 Anna 6 Comments
Where is the little girl
Who loved to dance, spin, and twirl
She sat on my knee
And was so proud when she counted to three
Scared of the dark, she came running to me
Her smile lit up a bad day
Always outside where she loved to play
Where are the toys scattered though the house
Where are her dolls and her little stuffed mouse
Why is my little girl not here
To make noise and cheer
I don't hear her shoes on the floor
Why is her tiny voice no more
Gone is my little girl
My treasure my pearl
I will never again see her tired eyes close
Hear her soft breathing
As her chest fell and rose
I would give anything to hear her sleepy sigh
Or even to hear her cry
Nothing is the same
The house is too quiet to tame
No more sticky hands
No more interrupted plans
No sweet voice singing a song
My little girl is gone
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August 2, 2018 Anna 2 Comments
Beloved, are my Stefano Bemer shoes and Cadillac
Are my schedules and carefully laid plans
Is my freedom, no one to set me back
Beloved, is my office, my desk, my chair
Is the wall that holds my degrees
Is the silk suit I wear
Beloved, is the coffee that splattered my tie
Your apologies, and moment I first saw your wide eyes
is the night we watched the stars in the sky
Beloved, is you all in white
Is the cake shoved in our mouths
Is the frosting around your lips, such a sight
Beloved, is your swollen belly
Are your eyes when you feel a kick
Is your cravings of pickles and jelly
Beloved, is the moment I first held her
Is her first word, first laugh
Beloved are moments I remember
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What does love taste like? What does it smell like?
Love doesn't have a taste or smell, you might say. But if you look a bit closer, you'll realize it does. It smells like your boyfriend's cologne. It tastes like the peanut butter cookies your wife makes you, even though she hates peanut butter.
Love is one of those things that is difficult to explain in your writing without using cliches. You hear the same lines over and over when reading a romantic scene in books. His eyes sparkled like the stars. Her lips were as red as roses. Her whole body burned like fire at his touch. Her lips on his made the world stop.
These saying stop having an affect on readers because they, or some variant, are used so often. But how do you break out of the cliche and get your readers to feel what your character is feeling?
The trick is to get your brain out of "roses are red" mode and get it using different words than flowers or twinkling stars to describe romance.
Using the five senses to describe love and romance forces you to come up with something different.
To really make this work, avoid using anything sensual. Like saying that love tastes like your partner's lips or feels like his hand running over your skin. There is a place for this when writing about romance, but for this exercise you'll want to describe things that normally aren't used to describe romantic feelings.
Here's what I came up with.
The Five Senses of Love
Love sounds like waves rushing against the shore, forever changing the sand it shifts beneath its shushing, easing, breathing.
Love is the wonderful shock of cool water embracing your body after a plunge, its sudden energy surrounding you, awakening every pore, causing a shudder.
Love fills the mouth with vanilla orange. Sweet and warm yet bright, vibrant, and tangy.
Love smells like Christmas. Like sugar cookies rising in the oven, green pine, sticky wood, and liquid cinnamon candles mingling to create a swirling haven.
Love is the shape of a crescent moon. Both sharp and curved. Firm and gentle. It's white glow soft enough to ignore if you choose, but bright enough to make even broken glass glisten and shimmer like a treasure all its own.
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P.S. I Think You're Cute
February 13, 2018 Anna 8 Comments
Six Years Old
Max saved the best Valentine's for last. He'd already given out the rest of the little bags of candy to his classmates, but the one still in his hand was better than those. It had a mini Hershey chocolate among the gummy bears.
He walked to Jacey, who was bent over digging in her purple backpack and tapped her shoulder. Her dark pigtails swished as she turned. The red ribbons she had tied in each one reminded Max of cherry Twizzlers.
"Here," Max said, holding out the bag of candy.
She took it and swooped back into her backpack. "I have yours." She came up holding a square card with a picture of Snoopy surrounded by hearts attached to a tiny bag of heart-shaped candies. The gross kind that taste like chalk.
"Thanks," Max said. Not because he was really glad to get the candies, but because it was the thing to say when someone gave you something.
Jacey frowned. "It doesn't have a card with it," she said peering into the clear plastic bag. The bag, much to Max's embarrassment, had red and pink hearts all over it. He'd wanted plain bags, but his mother insisted on the one the ones with hearts to make up for his un-valentine's-day-like candy of gummy bears.
"But it has chocolate," Max said. Which was more than she could say for her gift.
"Yeah, but it's more fun when there's a card too," she said, swishing one of her pigtails over her shoulder. "Then I can keep them on my dresser and look at them."
Max couldn't see why anyone would want to keep a bunch of cards with pictures of cartoon characters that said "Be mine" on them. "You can put the candy on your dresser," he tried.
She shook her head, making her pigtails swirl around her shoulders. "Candy isn't pretty. You eat candy. The cards are cute."
Max shrugged, not sure how he could argue with a girl about what was pretty or not. Next Valentine's Day, he would get her a bag of candy and a card.
Ten Years Old
There was a large Hershey bar sitting on his desk when he got to class. Max wasn't surprised. It was Valentine's day, so that was normal. But the note on the back wasn't normal. Unfortunately, Max didn't get to read it first.
"You got a whole chocolate bar?" asked Danny in the desk next to him as he snatched the bar from his hands. "Hey there's a love note on the back of it."
"It's not a love note," Max said, though he had no idea what it said.
"Yeah it is." Danny held it away so Max couldn't reach it. "It says, 'Happy Valentine's Day. P.S. I think you are cute.'" He read it loudly so the kids nearby could hear.
"Who would think you're cute, Danny?" asked one of the boys behind Max.
"Eww, it's not mine," Danny said. "It's his." Danny gave the chocolate back to Max. He flipped it over, hoping that Danny was making it up, but there was a square valentine with a picture of Snoopy. Scrawled over the Snoopy were the exact words Danny read.
Max turned red.
"Max has a girlfriend. Max has a girlfriend," the boys chanted.
"I do not." Max tossed the chocolate to Danny's desk. "I don't even want it."
"I'll take it," said one of the boys.
"No way. It's on my desk." Danny cupped his hands around it like a turtle shell.
Max pulled out his notebook, glad that they were all arguing over the chocolate and not teasing him anymore. He glanced up to make sure no one else was looking at him and saw Jacey looking at him from her desk across the room. She quickly looked away, without giving him her usual smile.
Max was sorry about more than the chocolate he didn't get to taste.
Sixteen Years Old
Max helped himself to a third glass of punch from the heart-shaped bowl. He didn't feel as awkward with something in his hands. Plastic cup filled, he went back to his spot against the wall and watched the rest of his high school swirl past in graceful moves and huge smiles. Among them was his date. Or at least the girl he'd asked and had said yes. He wasn't sure if she was still his date or not, since after the first dance, she'd gone off to talk to some other guy. She hadn't been back.
Max spotted his red-haired ex-date laughing as she dance with a tall boy. Was that the fifth or six different boy he'd seen her dance with?
He took another swig of the punch. It was too sweet. He headed toward a trashcan, deciding he would wait in the hall for the party to be over. At least he could count on his phone to keep him company.
Halfway to the trashcan, he bumped into someone and dripped some punch on their arm. Max apologized, thinking that this night couldn't get any worse.
"It's alright," said a laughing voice. Max looked up and right into Jacey's deep brown eyes.
"Oh, hi," Max said lamely. They'd use to be close friends when they were little, but he wasn't sure if she remembered.
"Care to get me a napkin." She held up her punch-speckled arm.
Max hurried to the punch table and grabbed a handful of napkins. He spun around and almost knocked into her again when he found her standing right behind him. He apologized again, but she only laughed and took the napkins.
"Are you here by yourself?" she asked.
"No," Max was quick to say. He didn't want to look lame. "She's over there." He pointed to the red-haired girl that looked like there was nothing more fun than being apart from Max. He immediately wished he would said he was here by himself.
"You too?" she raise an eyebrow.
She shrugged. "My date is a bit more enthusiastic about the whole dancing thing than I am. So he found someone equally enthralled with trying to impress the other with their amazing collection of movements." She did a jerky movement that looked like a demon-possessed robot and Max laughed.
"I'm glad I'm not the only one at this thing that doesn't like to dance," Max said. "It's too bad Valentine's couldn't stay like it when we were little. All we had to do was hand out cards and eat candy."
"I'd take chocolate over loud music and vanishing dates any day." She grinned. "You always gave out the best Valentines."
"I did?" Max was surprised she even remembered his Valentine's gifts. He was strangely pleased that she thought they were the best.
"They always had different kinds of candy in them. Like gummy bears and sour candies."
Max grinned. "I'll have to tell my mom that. She thought sour candy was all wrong for Valentine."
Jacey grabbed his arm suddenly. "You know what we should do?" The curls in her hair bobbed as she did a little bounce. "We should go to the store and find some candy and Valentine's cards—you know, the kind we gave out as kids."
"For our dates?" Max asked, imagining the look he would get from the girl he came with if he tried to give her a kid Valentine card and gummies.
"Not them." Jacey laughed. "For each other. Just for fun."
Max tossed his punch in the trash. "I could use some candy."
As Max wound through the crowd with Jacey by his side, he knew just what he'd get her. Sour gummies with a Snoopy card. And across the Snoopy he'd write: Happy Valentine's Day. P.S. I think you cute.
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Sunflowers and Roses
"I wish the timing had been better," I said. I looked at the roses he gave me. I preferred sunflowers.
"It's not about the timing," Sean said. "It's about what's right for us." It had been a year since I'd seen him, but he still talked in that same convincing way that would have anyone ready to believe what he said was true.
"I'm engaged," I said. "I can't just walk away from him."
"Yes you can."
"It's not that simple."
"Why not? Tell him you can't marry him because you love someone else."
"I do love him."
"You said you loved me."
"I did. But you were never there. Nathan was."
He looked away and ran his fingers though his hair. "What does that mean for us then?"
I gave the roses back to him. "It means we can't be together."
Eight months prior
We'd always be together. That's what I thought. But here I was laying in a hospital bed with nothing but his rushed emails to keep me company. You'd think he'd write more since he was a journalist. But maybe he was tired of writing after doing it all day. He was probably suffering from jet lag when he wrote them. The travel magazine he worked for kept him going from place to place. Which is why he wasn't with me during the surgery.
It all happened so fast. The test came back positive for cancer. The operation was scheduled to remove it.
The doctors said everything went well, and here I was resting in a hospital room alone until I fully recovered and could go home.
There was a knock on the door, and in came that man from this morning, Nathan. He wasn't as tall as Sean, but his smile made him seem 6'2. It also chased away my gloomy thoughts.
"I brought you this," Nathan said, producing a rose from behind his back.
"Oh, you didn't have to," I said, but I was touched he'd come all the back here to bring me the rose. This morning he'd come in with a sunflower and a small get-well-soon card. I thought he had the wrong room, but he explained that he passed out flowers and cards to people in the hospital on the weekends. He had cancer himself when he was a teen, and ever since then would bring people in the hospital flowers. As we talked, I mentioned that my favorite flowers were roses.
"Well a favorite flower cheers a person up double the amount of just any other flower," Nathan said, slipping the rose in the glass jar beside the sunflower.
"Does this mean you'll be taking the sunflower somewhere else?" I joked. I was smiling for the first time since he left this morning.
"I guess since you're so pretty, you can have both." He winked.
I blushed, but enjoyed the compliment. For the first time since Sean left, I didn't feel alone. I looked at the two flowers setting beside each other in the jar. I was surprised to find myself liking the sunflower more. Maybe my favorites were changing.
Hey Epic Dreamers! This was yet another installment of the 13 Week Streak – Summer Flash Fiction Challenge. I hope you're enjoying these small stories.
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The Pact
She looks like me. That was the first thing Tyler thought when he saw girl who was moving into the house next door. He wondered if she moved here straight from China or if her family had been in the U.S. for generations like his.
She was sitting on the porch steps, chin in her hands. She didn't look very happy. For some reason, he wanted her to look up at him.
Tyler grabbed the scooter leaning against his house down his driveway then stopped at the street. He wasn't allowed cross the line where the light cement of the driveway ended and the black pavement of the road began. But she was watching him now, and he didn't want her to think he was a baby, so he crossed the line and let the wheels roll over the road.
He stopped when he reached the next driveway. Her driveway.
"Can I ride in your driveway?" he asked. She nodded and he scooted his way right up to her porch. He stopped in front of her.
"Did you just get here from China?" Then he remembered how every new kid at school would always ask him that and how it annoyed him, so he added, "Or has your family been here for generations? Mine has been here for four. I've never even been to China."
She blinked at him. She probably wasn't used to having people actually realize that just because she was Chinese didn't mean she came from China.
He was sure she was impressed until she said, "I'm not Chinese."
Now it was Tyler's turn to blink. But she looked…Oh. "Japanese?"
She shook her head. "I'm from the Philippines." She said words strangely. She had an accent.
To keep from feeling silly, he changed the subject. "I'm seven. How old are you?"
She brightened. "I'm seven too. That means I'll be in your class at school right?"
"Yeah. I can show you the ropes." He'd heard that phrase in a movie. It sounded cool.
"You will show me around?" She seemed confused. She probably didn't know what "show you the ropes meant."
"I'll show you around and tell you everything you need to know," Tyler explained, feeling important.
"Oh, good. I've never been to an American school before."
Tyler remembered his fist day of school and how nervous he'd been. "We'll make a pact," he said, because he'd seen a boy and a girl make a pact in a movie once and always wanted to do it. "I'll be your partner for everything that happens at school."
"Ok," the girl said.
"Shake on it?" Tyler asked, holding his hand out. That's what the boy and girl did in the movie. The girl put her hand in his. He grinned, and she grinned back.
Tyler rode home on his scooter feeling very satisfied with himself.
Then he relized he didn't know the girl's name.
"Marie!" Tyler called as he rushed down the hall, dodging the other kids to catch up with her. She turned around and smiled. She wore her hair differently and she wore different clothes, but that smile hadn't changed since she was seven. Tyler was glad. It would be like changing the flavor of chocolate chip cookies. They didn't need to be changed.
"I'm going to be in the talent show," he said. "Want to be my partner?"
Marie's face fell. "Amber just asked me."
"Well, I'm sure she'll understand. We're always partners." Ever since the day of their pact, they'd been partners for everything. The science projects in the third grade that got baking soda and vinegar all over Marie's new shoes because Tyler wanted their volcano to have the biggest explosion. The fifth grade book report that was almost a disaster because Marie wanted to read Charlotte's Web and Tyler wanted to read Bridge to Terabithia. Luckily, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe saved the day. It had animals and magic.
"I already told her I'd do it with her," Marie said. She no longer had the accent she had when she was seven.
"But we're always partners," Tyler said lamely.
"We can be partners with other people sometimes." Marie looked apologetic.
Tyler paused, hoping she'd change her mind, but she didn't say anything. He shrugged. "I guess I'll find someone else."
She smiled at him. That smile that didn't change. Somehow it hurt to look at it.
It hurt to watch Marie talking with the guy by her side. Laughing, smiling that killer smile of hers. He'd probably asked her out to the junior prom already. It shouldn't bother Tyler. He was already taking someone.
Still, somehow he'd imagined taking Marie, even though they'd slowly drifted apart over the years. His family moved to a different neighborhood when he was in eighth grade, then came junior high and different class schedules. They still talked, but Tyler wasn't sure it was enough to ask her to be his date.
He'd daydreamed about asking her. He'd even thought about reminding her of the pact they made when they were kids, but he wasn't even sure if she remembered. He would end up looking stupid. So this morning, a day before the junior prom, he asked a girl in his math class that didn't have anyone to go with. It was safe. His friends said she'd had a crush on him all year long. It wasn't Marie, but at least he wouldn't make a fool of himself by asking and getting turned down.
Tyler turned away from Marie and the annoying guy by her side and opened his locker. He pulled a notebook out and a folded piece of notebook paper fluttered to the floor.
Thinking it was some stray notes, he started to put it back in the notebook. Then he saw his name written on the front.
He'd seen that handwriting nearly everyday in Elementary and Middle School. He'd watched it change from block letters to the rounded ones that spelled out his name.
Marie's handwriting.
He slowly unfolded it, feeling like he was unwrapping a Christmas present he'd waited all year to open.
Hey Tyler!
I know it's a bit late, but I was sort of hoping you'd get around to it first. Then I thought, "Why does it have to be the guy that does the asking?" I tried to think of a fancy way to do this, but then decided to keep it simple. You always did like to keep things simple (unless it's a paper mache volcano).
You can probably guess what I'm about to ask you, so I'll just go ahead and say it.
Will you go to the prom with me?
You can't say no because you made a promise that you'd be my partner for anything school related. 😉
Anxiously waiting your response,
Tyler grinned. She remembered the pact they'd made. He could have used it to ask her.
Then his smile dropped. Could have. He'd already asked someone else. It was too late.
Maybe he could get out of it. Maybe he could explain it to the girl he'd asked.
Explain what? That they'd made a pact when they where in second grade to always be partners in everything. That they hadn't been partners for anything since they were twelve, but now all of a sudden it was important for him to go with Marie even though it meant rudely dumping the girl he'd asked?
He couldn't do that, even if this was what he wanted. He would have to tell her that he was going with someone else.
Tyler's stomach knotted at the thought. Never in all his daydreams did he have to turn Marie down.
He sighed and folded the note. Why hadn't he just ask her? Why couldn't she have asked him just a few hours earlier?
Maybe she'd waited so late because she was hoping someone else would ask her. Maybe she was only asking him because she didn't want to go alone. What was that last line? You can't say no because you made a promise that you'd be my partner for anything school related. What if she was only asking him because she knew he'd say yes? He was nothing but a back-up plan.
Well, he wouldn't be a back-up plan. Hadn't she been the one to say that they should have other partners?
Tyler shoved the note back in the locker and pretend he never saw it.
Tyler hurried through the empty school halls. He'd left his jacket in one of the classrooms and hadn't realized it until he'd stepped into the frided air. He was getting a ride home with one of his friends because his car hadn't started that morning. First his car wouldn't start, then the girl he asked to prom already had a date, then he forgot his jacket. What else could go wrong?
Tyler opened the classroom door. He froze.
Marie was sitting in one of the desks.
They hadn't talked since last year when she'd slipped that note in his locker. Tyler felt so guilty about the whole thing, that he avoided her. It wasn't hard to do. Tyler suspected she was avoiding him too. He wished he'd at least written a note back, explaining why he couldn't take her. But the more time that went by, the more awkward it seemed to approach her.
As if the distance between them weren't uncomfortable enough, Tyler could tell she'd been crying.
She quickly wiped her face and gave a weak smile. It made Tyler's heart twist. It wasn't her smile. It was like chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips.
"I forgot my jacket," Tyler said, feeling the need to explain why he was invading her privacy.
"That one?" She pointed to the jacket hanging over the back of the desk right in front of her. Of course it would be right next to her. It couldn't be right by the door so he could grab it and leave.
He made his way over there, keeping his eyes focused on the jacket as if it would dissapear if he lost sight of it for even a second. He felt he should say something, but didn't know what. It was her business. Whatever he said would probably make it worse anyway.
Marie stood and scooped her backpack up from the floor, getting ready to leave. By then he was already in her row and just a couple of steps away from his jacket. She picked it up and held it out to him.
His fingers brushed the tips of hers as he took it. His stomach fluttered.
He realized that he was standing there, blocking her way, but instead of moving he said, "Are you alright?"
Marie shrugged. "I'm fine. Just a rough day."
She wasn't fine. She looked like she did after the goldfish he'd won at a fair for her died and her mom flushed it down the toilet. "It wasn't such a great day for me either," Tyler said.
"Can't be that bad," she said. "Unless you got dumped too."
Dumped? She'd been with that guy since Christmas. All that time together and he broke up with her a week before prom? The jerk. She deserved better than that. "My car would start this morning."
She laughed. The sound made Tyler grin.
"I think I'd rather take a stubborn car than a brake up right now," she said. The smile faded and she sighed. "I guess I just don't have luck with these things."
"Yes you do. I mean you should. I mean he's the unlucky one. Who wouldn't want to go to prom with you?"
"Quite a few people actually," she said, sharply. Then she looked down as if she hadn't meant to say that.
Tyler couldn't help but think she was talking about him. It's not as if that note could have gotten lost in a little locker. He would have seen it eventually. She probably wondered why he never brought it up, even after the prom was over, to explain. It didn't help that he'd avoided her. Of course she was mad at him.
"I should go," Marie said, hinting that he should move. But he didn't. He couldn't let this opportunity go. What were the chances that he would run into her right after that jerk broke up with her, and before someone else asked her? Tyler silently thanked the girl who'd turned him down earlier.
"I have to tell you something," he blurted. "I saw the note you left in my locker–"
"I know you did," she said. "I was walking by you as you reached your locker. I looked back as you opened it up."
Tyler swallowed. He remembered her walking by, but he didn't know she'd seen him. "I'm sorry. I'd already asked someone else and didn't know how to tell you."
She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Junior Prom is over." She smiled. Another smile that wasn't hers.
"It does matter. I should have told you. I shouldn't have let all this time go by without explaining."
She shrugged again. "People get crushes on people who don't like them back all the time. It's just one of those things. We don't have to make things awkward."
He grinned on the inside. She had a crush on him. Then the feeling faded. She had a crush on him last year before he'd ruined his chance with her. What did she think of him now?
She took a step forward, as if to make Tyler get out of her way.
He didn't move. She was standing so close. "Yes," he said.
"What?" She looked up at him, startled.
"I'm answering your note." Tyler's heart beat. She'd probably slap him. "I'll take you to prom. If you'll go with me."
She raised her eyebrows. "Are you trying to be funny?"
"We made a pact. We'd always be partners for anything that happened at school. So, it may have taken me awhile, but I'm making good on that pact."
"You don't have to ask me to prom because of a promise we made when we were kids."
"That's not why I'm asking you."
"You don't have to ask me out because you didn't answer my silly note."
"That's not why–"
"I hope you aren't asking me because you feel sorry for me because my stupid boyfriend dumped me right before prom."
Tyler smiled. It had been a while since he'd talked with her. It was nice to hear her voice again. Even if she was a bit mad.
"What?" Marie asked.
"I'm asking you because I like you."
Marie smiled. She smiled her smile.
Tyler smiled at god and said i will repent from not respecting maries dision and god said marie has a crash on the other pirson and tyler was jelous to be continud
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August 15, 2016 Anna 13 Comments
Can't describe the turmoil I feel
Open was my heart, my love was real
Never thought we wouldn't spend the years together
For us, wasn't a storm I wouldn't weather
Us- a word never to be used again
See how blind I've been
Even now it seems unreal
Didn't think my heart they'd steal
***I'm writing a book. If you didn't get your vote in, do it now!
Daily Prompt: Confused
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