Dec 15, 2015 Original Poetry

Ouroboros
(Prompt:  Beloved, Poetry, Day 7)
©December 15th, 2015
Vijaya Sundaram

When the stars have burned out
And turned into lumps of coal
Useless, unless sparked into life,
That’s when I might, just might
Leave you.

My beloved, it’s because I have
To light those stars again.
It’ll take some time
Before I return.
An eternity, perhaps, or
Just the time it takes to
Create another, crisper
Tighter Universe, self-contained
Not expanding uselessly —
Such a waste of space
That would be!

Will you forget me
And move on, seeking
The ghost of a memory?

Or will you stick around
And wait, while I tend
To those fires?

Because, you know, beloved,
Ours will always endure.
We journeyed across
Continents of space-time
And burst into this world
Comets from the heart of time
Except that we bent the warp
And weft of space, and time
Bent upon itself, an
Ouroboros weaving itself
Into itself, being born
And unborn,
While we, too, met and
Parted, met and parted,
Knowing we’d meet again.

So, if you’ll wait here, right
By this doorway into that
Other world, I’ll return
From my light-self,
Into this body, and hold
Your hand forever,
And never let go.

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Tags: #Love, #Ouroboros, #Writing 101, Poetry, Beloved, Day 7

Sep 15, 2015 Original Flash Fiction, Writing 101

“What hath night to do with sleep?”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

Solve for C

A very short Short Story about Flying and Angles

©September 15th, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

Every night, Clara came awake with a start. Sleep fled into the darkness, sounding like the rustle of wings, a sigh of regret. She sat up in bed, turned to look at the profile of her sleeping dog in the pale moonlight flooding the room, and blinked.

For a few minutes, she didn’t know who she was or where she was.

She passed her right hand over her shoulder blades, which were aching, and remembered that something had been there.

She looked again at her dog.  Bella, her dog lay on her back, legs limply in the air, smiling in her sleep.  Such relaxation emanated from her that it calmed Clara down.

Then, she looked at the clock. 3:45 a.m. Again? Memory flooded back. She awoke at 3:45 a.m. every single night, from a dream where she had been dancing on the edge of a sheer cliff.

And in every one of those, she was looking down that cliff which ended on a narrow rocky ledge, and then, into the crashing ocean below.  And her shoulders ached unbearably.

Clara closed her eyes, and a little exhale came from deep within her.  In her dream, she thought she knew what was going to happen next, and her heart hammered with fear.

In minutes, she fell asleep again.

And she was falling, falling … but not straight down.  And something was steadying her fall.  She felt the whoosh of great wings heaving up and down behind her.  Her wings!

And she seemed to be gliding down at an angle, a slide, almost.

Before she reached the ocean, she took off into the sky, and looked down.

A glittering right-angled triangle shimmered in the moonlight below her — from the cliff to the level sands, and the gliding slide she had angled down.

Great squares of light arose from the cliff face, the ocean, and her long, transparent air-slide.  Her wings glowed like the sun.

All around her were glittering shapes, transparent and shimmering angles, beings of light.  She drank in the air and light.  She was at peace here.  Then, after a long while, a sound reached her, and she knew there was something she had to do.

In the morning, Bella the dog had awoken to find herself completely alone.  Her neighbor, Anjali, heard Bella’s doleful howling, which seemed to go on for a full five minutes, before it became suddenly still.

Something was wrong.  Pulling on a robe, and agitated, Anjali called Clara on the phone.  No answer.   She grabbed the spare key that Clara had left her in case of emergencies, and let herself into Clara’s home, calling out her name and Bella’s all the while, but there was no answer, no pitter-patter of paws on the tiles in the kitchen, so clattering on the wood floor.

When she entered the bedroom, she saw two triangular indentations on the bed, one larger than the other.  The hair on the nape of her neck rose.

The air in the room was electric with exultation and light.

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Tags: Day 7