Sep 25, 2014 Original Short Stories
PHOTO PROMPT Copyright – Marie Gail Stratford
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count (not including the title, name, date): 100 words
Only Darkness at the End of the Day
©September 25th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
The wine-light spilled in gem-tones, red, gold and green, filled with promise, promising respite. He yearned for it.
He thought about what had happened that day — the morning quarrel, the slammed door, the long commute to work, work that sucked away his joy, unmade all he had become.
And when he’d come home, the note he’d found on the dresser, and the absence of his center, the lingering ghost of her perfume sealed it.
I’m sorry. I tried. It won’t work. You didn’t try hard enough.
Gazing deep into all that light, he reached for it.
Bitter oblivion tasted of grapes.
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Thanks, as always, to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for being such a warm and inspiring host of Friday Fictioneers. Thanks, also, to Marie Gail Stratford, for her beautiful photograph.
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, #Heartbreak, #Original Short Story, 100-word short story based on photo prompt, breakup, Flash Fiction, in vino veritas, Oblivion, wine and marriage
Mar 28, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Lilies and Poppies ©By Vijaya Sundaram March 28th, 2013
Tomorrow is Good Friday.
It means nothing to me, in the religious sense. I am an atheist Hindu, with a mystical, spiritual leaning. Oh, and I went to a convent school in India, while coming from a somewhat orthodox Tamilian Brahmin family (our parents chose the route of “convent school education” for their two daughters for various reasons).
However, I do sometimes feel as if I’m carrying a cross up a hill, and being buried in a cave that’s shut with a boulder.
I’m still waiting for that angel to remove the boulder, so I can ascend on Easter Sunday.
Will I be done with the work that’s weighing on me? Everything depends on that. Work takes precedence over everything in this country. So, there’s an extra-delicious sense of guilt when one is playing hooky, even if is for an hour or two.
See what I mean? I used the phrase “playing hooky” so casually, thinking that if I don’t do my schoolwork immediately upon getting home, then it’s “playing hooky.” I mean, my time is supposed to be MY time, and yet, I have to do work well into the wee hours, frequently. And my so-called “Prep Time” at school is taken up with menial tasks. It never ends.
Work is over-rated, I think.
What was it that the Christ said about the lilies of the field?
Forget Ascension. I want to be one of those lilies. Better still, a poppy, so that I can embrace blissful oblivion.
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P.S. if anyone is a devout Christian and is reading my blog, please know that I mean no offense in using the metaphor of carrying a cross or wanting to ascend. It is a metaphor.
P.P.S. For those who might be worried about my mention of “poppy” and “oblivion,” please note that, again, I am being metaphorical.
Tags: Idleness, Leisure, Lilies of the field, Oblivion, Work