Dec 9, 2015 Friday Fictioneers, Original Short Story
PHOTO PROMPT © Luther Siler
Word Count: 100 words of text, exactly
Genre: Realistic Metaphorical Fiction
Block-Cage
©December 9th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
The prisoner beat his head against the cage, and died …
I stopped typing, and shook my head. I didn’t like the story.
My eight-year-old came into my room, saw the fallen bird, and said, “Sorry Mom, it fell when I reached up to touch it. I’ll fix it.” And she did, after which I hung it from its hook. For a moment, I looked at it fondly, smiling, then went back to my computer, erased my first line, and began again:
When the prisoner beat his head against the prison-bars, he grew wings …
Time melted away.
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Thanks, as always, to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for hosting Friday Fictioneers, and to Luther Siler for that surreal photograph!
Tags: Bird, Bird-cage, Setting, Writer's Block, Writing
Dec 9, 2015 Friday Fictioneers, Original Short Story
PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot
Word Count: 100 words of text, exactly
Genre: War/Ghost-Fiction
Doors of Deception
©December 9th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Once, there was a house.
Once, there were warm, living people in this house.
There was a house, with warm, living people in it — now there is dry heather. Wind moans through empty spaces amidst iron scraps. Doors open into the wild, where the sun (or is it a small bomb, or an army Hummer?) shines, blinding me.
Beside it, offices go up, glass-blindingly oblivious to lives gone.
Wandering here, I wonder, Was it worth it?
A soldier steps out, points his gun at me, says, “Move along, citizen.”
I step through the doors, and vanish.
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Thanks, as always, to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (sorry I’m a whole week late with writing this one, since the new one already came out today!), for hosting Friday Fictioneers, where writers meet and write 100-word short stories based on photo-prompts. Thanks to Roger Bultot for the evocative photo!
Tags: #Loss, 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, Doors, War
Dec 9, 2015 Original Poetry
Morpheus Dreams of Sleep
©December 9th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
I sift dreams, and drift through souls
Bringing stasis, wafting through
That place where poppies grow,
Whose redness, like blood,
Makes me nod, and nod,
But I never sleep.
I ache with desire for sleep.
I search, adrift, through worlds
Seeking sleep.
I cast my nets far,
And capture stars and ride the orbits
Of planets, and swim through space,
Seeking sleep.
Making myself small,
I fall headlong into human time,
And fly through their tiny,
Powerful lives, so full of fury
And so full of grace; I fly,
Seeking sleep.
And then, I reach your bed.
You lie awake, lost to all, lost to me.
Your eyes are full of moonbeams.
I am ensnared. I approach.
You don’t see me. You are elsewhere.
I cannot shake you.
I stand beside you, spellbound.
Dreaming with eyes open,
You lie on your bed, and weave a cosmos,
Expanding galaxies of voiceless dreams
Larger than a cranium, larger than
My cloaked, moon-dark self,
Larger than the edges of all that’s known.
And the threads pull me towards you
Like a lover pulls with the moon with her blood.
I see you, and I desire you,
Weaver of spells, my keeper.
For now I know
Why I didn’t find sleep —
I hadn’t found you.
You spin worlds, and I spin headlong
Into them, spiraling into
Quiet breathing, flow of air and blood,
And you draw me within you.
And I find what I seek: Peace.
And the power of you, your sleepless
Dreaming mind, your clenched griefs
Your love of sleep, and of me,
These pull me, and I, Morpheus, helpless
Like a leaf in a current, zigzag towards
Towards the shore of you,
Seeking dreams in you.
You see me now. Your eyes widen,
Draw me in. I am home in you,
Come to rest at last
In the curtains behind your eyes,
Poet of my sleep,
Dreaming of me.
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Tags: #Love, #Writing 101, Dreaming, Morpheus, Poetry Day 3, Sleep