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Seven days in AutumnEarl Carlton died in a tree-house of vines, twisted boughs and Autumn leaves surrounded by the scent of earth and vanilla musk. His wife cried for him at the foot of his rope ladder and begged him to come to bed each night as the mercury dropped and the storm clouds rolled in.
"I can't" He eventually responded on the 3rd night and by that time, people had gathered in earnest to witness the man's downfall.
"Why not?"demanded his wife, shivering in wool with her hair whipped behind her by the prevailing winds.
He thought about this for another four nights and the crowds grew bigger and each time his wife begged him to come down and be amongst the people once more. He beckoned her closer on the seventh night and she unsteadily stepped onto the lowest rung of the ladder, tottering precariously.
"I can't come down," He shouted across the high winds, "Because if I do, nobody will ask for me anymore."
A murmur of admi
InsomniaFrom the day they had met until the day she died he had always known she was an insomniac. Her most entertaining emails and their deepest conversations were exchanged across many late night hours. So when they told him she had died peacefully in her sleep, it was only natural that he questioned his very existence and everything else on this earth that he had thought to be true.
Grief came and became increasingly difficult to shake off when the day came to a close and he wanted to sleep. He could only think of life, of the life in her. He could only think about how touching her was like wading into a lake in the Summer and bending forward to capture the ripples as they danced across the surface of the water. Impossible in your thoughts - but achievable when you put your mind to it.
Yet alone at night without her body alive with energy and aching to write beside him, he felt empty. It was during these times that he understood they
And then there was oneThey didn't sound like gunshots. That's all she remembered thinking at the time. The bitter noise slicing through the hazy summer evening started off like a gunshot but ended up as something sharp. Perhaps somebody had dropped something on a building site across the Valley. That's what she allowed herself to think the first three times she heard it. Then the traffic on the distant motorway stopped, the echoing vibrations of cars racing home abruptly finished. Noise stopped traveling down through the trees and across the length of the river. The sky, which had begun the day as a cobalt blue had morphed into slate grey. The sound came again, but this time it wasn't alone. It didn't sound like gunshots. That's all she could think of, when the door splintered and there they were.
The Grey LadyWhen I first saw her, sitting in the middle of a vast armchair, staring out of the window - I was reminded of the Grey Lady. She was Grey. But she couldn't have been more than eight or nine years old. Her hair was long and perfectly straight but it looked dusty. As if she had been sitting there for years, forgotten. Her eyes were sunken, sallow. Her skin was a pallour of grey that I've never seen on a human being before. Dark, damp, but it looked as though if you touched her a cloud would form in front of you. Dusty.
I was one of the unfortunate parents roped into going on a residential school trip to the Lake District. It was my job to tick off the names as people left the reception of the school and clambered into the bus. I ticked my own son off as he stood beside me, nervously reaching to catch my free hand and continued through the list of his classmates one by one. The grey girl didn't move and I hesitated as I ran my finger down the register. I had ticked every name and it was a
The HappeningAnd this? This he could remember. The constants in his life began when the sun rose but never made another appearance until it set. He waited throughout the day for this  happening because it was the last string of sanity that he could grip onto. When the sun disappeared and the shadows lengthened? Well that was when depression would sneak its hands around his neck and into his memory, removing yet another thing that he wanted to keep safe forever.

He was afraid to sleep.

Afraid because when he woke up another thread of normality had gone. And even though the sun rose, the gaps in-between and the hours he had to wait to see it sink, grew wi
CeladonCeladon
glazed shards litter
the pale tiles like a million
green apple slices.
The crunch underfoot
is a gunshot;
the long exhale
is salted with tension.
The plum branch is buried
under spearmint pieces
of pottery, smooth,
cold jade on one side,
textured clay on the other.

The blossoms are already dying.
CafuneShe had seen it coming somehow. The way his face shifted in no noticeable way; she was still seeing the exact same expression, but it was accessible now, softer. Inviting. His fingers were teasing her hair, combing it back and letting it fall again while she quietly treasured the sensation of his fingernails barely brushing against her scalp.

She remembered having short hair when she was young – it had never suited her face. She wasn't made to rock the edgy look of a bob or any severe cut really. The sudden airiness when all that weight had been cut off had been disconcerting. Besides, she missed the drama of long hair in the wind.

Now
Going UpShe hated and loved Wednesdays. Hated, because of Chemistry. Loved, because of Literature. Going to Lit. gave her a reason to crawl out of bed each morning. More importantly, it was an incentive to get through Chemistry with all her digits intact. It didn't matter in the slightest as today was Thursday, but she hadn't remembered that when packing her satchel this morning. The too-heavy Chemistry book was just another reason to hate the course. She sighed heavily and pressed the elevator button again.

"It won't come just because you keep pressing the button," Professor Bradley sounded amused.

"No," she stifled the urge to yawn. "But I'll fee
Dancing with HailHailstones were dancing the day I wasn't meant to save your life. The grass was the fresh kind of green that comes alive sometime between the end of March and the beginning of April. The ice bounced noisily from the wide windscreen of the ambulance as we sped through country lanes, red lights and sleepy hamlets. When we stopped at the edge of the valley, overlooking endless fields of grass the air became silent. The hailstones fell silently here, but they danced among the blades.

I saw your car first, before anything else. There was a police car, a fire engine and an alarmed Farmer leaning heavily on his walking stick, breathing hard, shock.
Bigger WordsHe used to say "if you publish a book," or "when you publish a book."

He doesn't say that anymore.

Now he says "you're going to publish a book," and I'd wonder when the decision stopped being mine if I hadn't already known what I was getting myself into with him in the first place.
Chalk WhiteChalk white
phalanges strung together
compose a bone necklace
that grips her throat
like a rasping phantom.
Her lace petticoats rustle
like the hush of leaves
when she rises to greet the honeycomb
moon shining on apple orchards
and dead pumpkin vines
murdered by Winter.
The soft glow of distant
lanterns beckons – she forgets
all about the arsenic in her teacup.
ButtermilkButtermilk
and white trim walls
hide behind the towering stacks of books
cluttering his kitchen.
The cat purrs on the windowsill,
perking his ears when
the kettle begins to whistle.

He slathers the toast
with butter - the real kind - and
takes his tea with too much sugar,
just the way she likes it.
When the day falls cold,
she leaves with a warmth
growing in the bottom of her chest.
ScaffoldingHe knew she liked the English lounge; it was quiet and she was rarely bothered by any other visitors. Students usually went to the library when they needed a quiet place to work and the professors tended to keep to their offices. The hunch proved him right – he found her staring a hole in the wall from her position on the old couch seating area. She had folded her knees up to her chest and crossed her arms over them with her chin resting on top. Her eyes flicked over to the doorway when he entered, but promptly moved back to staring at nothing as a barely audible sigh escaped her lips. He gently nudged the door mostly closed and walked o
(A)Musing - Part OneIt took ten minutes for Lawrence Bradley to realize he was still on the same paragraph, reading without actually reading. He blinked at the page rather dully before opening the bedside table drawer and fishing out a bookmark. The story would not progess tonight, not as long as these thoughts weighted heavily on his mind. He folded up his wire glasses and laid them on top of the book. Sighing, he slouched his way into a more horizontal position.

It would have been a lie to claim he wasn't attracted to her. And Lawrence Bradley was, among other things, a honest man. He was attracted, but he didn't know why.

She was quite sweet, but no more so
Too SmartJenna Springfield tossed her long bleach blonde hair over one shoulder.

"Why do you hang out up here anyway? The English department is boring. Can't you work with us in the cafeteria?"

"It's quiet here," she didn't even look up from her notebook. Jenna snatched it for a look.

"Is this for Bradley's class?"

"Great. There went my essay. I was on a roll with that Jen." Autumn clicked her pen and held out an arm for her notebook. Jenna didn't bite and tossed her hair again instead.

"Whatever. It's not like you need it to pass Bradley's class."

"That's Dr. Bradley to you Miss Springfield." Jenna whirled around to find the professor in questi
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I thought I knew my death.I thought I knew my death. He grabbed my heart one day and squeezed tightly, banded fear wrapping its way around my body and terrorizing the air from my lungs. "Not..Like..This.." I would gasp, thinking that there must be some better way out. I would start to beg but it would soon be over. He'd release me and my body would give up. There would be nothing left to say.

I thought I knew my death. She would slip into the shadows some months before I thought my time was up. She would slowly take my memories for my own, replacing them with child's talk and nonsensical things. "Oh please, won't somebody help me." It would be a rhetoric, although I
MemoryBecause there is only one of you;
in all of time
there is a need to preserve like a pickle;
the things that I love.
The Death of LanguageThey say that every fourteen days, a language dies. The statistic isn't alarming, after all there are supposedly seven thousand languages in the world. That a language dies every two weeks, is just a statistic. The concern comes with the knowledge that a language dies because it has been forgotten. Thus it dies without recognition, without farewell and without acknowledgment. It was merely there before, a communication bridge once upon a literary dream - now a nothing. This fascinating tool that we use to interact with our fellow human beings is lost. And we don't care. The Eskimos, they say, had a hundred words for snow.
That favourite pair of shoes that you love all the holes and splits into because they are so perfect and fit you so well - gets a better send off than a language. That coat that's become too small or too big, or too much last years fashion and too little of this years craze gets more of a farewell than a languag
InsomniaFrom the day they had met until the day she died he had always known she was an insomniac. Her most entertaining emails and their deepest conversations were exchanged across many late night hours. So when they told him she had died peacefully in her sleep, it was only natural that he questioned his very existence and everything else on this earth that he had thought to be true.
Grief came and became increasingly difficult to shake off when the day came to a close and he wanted to sleep. He could only think of life, of the life in her. He could only think about how touching her was like wading into a lake in the Summer and bending forward to capture the ripples as they danced across the surface of the water. Impossible in your thoughts - but achievable when you put your mind to it.
Yet alone at night without her body alive with energy and aching to write beside him, he felt empty. It was during these times that he understood they
Seven days in AutumnEarl Carlton died in a tree-house of vines, twisted boughs and Autumn leaves surrounded by the scent of earth and vanilla musk. His wife cried for him at the foot of his rope ladder and begged him to come to bed each night as the mercury dropped and the storm clouds rolled in.
"I can't" He eventually responded on the 3rd night and by that time, people had gathered in earnest to witness the man's downfall.
"Why not?"demanded his wife, shivering in wool with her hair whipped behind her by the prevailing winds.
He thought about this for another four nights and the crowds grew bigger and each time his wife begged him to come down and be amongst the people once more. He beckoned her closer on the seventh night and she unsteadily stepped onto the lowest rung of the ladder, tottering precariously.
"I can't come down," He shouted across the high winds, "Because if I do, nobody will ask for me anymore."
A murmur of admi
And then there was oneThey didn't sound like gunshots. That's all she remembered thinking at the time. The bitter noise slicing through the hazy summer evening started off like a gunshot but ended up as something sharp. Perhaps somebody had dropped something on a building site across the Valley. That's what she allowed herself to think the first three times she heard it. Then the traffic on the distant motorway stopped, the echoing vibrations of cars racing home abruptly finished. Noise stopped traveling down through the trees and across the length of the river. The sky, which had begun the day as a cobalt blue had morphed into slate grey. The sound came again, but this time it wasn't alone. It didn't sound like gunshots. That's all she could think of, when the door splintered and there they were.

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September 18, 2012
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Sea Glass and Sand

:iconkaz-d:

The only day she could recall that they lived without fear, was a trip to the beach when the children were small. It was late September and an Autumnal breeze whipped skirts and peeled their long blonde hair back from their heads without mercy. Nobody complained though. They spread blankets on the fine sand and despite the chill the sun warmed them briefly - just enough to get by. That was all she ever would ask for. They drank hot chocolate from the cafe and didn't eat the grainy sandwiches that she had lovingly packed that morning. Instead they bought fish and chips and shared a carton of mushy peas, warm and sweet. The children swam in waves that gently caressed the shore. Whilst she pretended to read but really kept two well trained eyes on the bobbing heads, they hunted sea glass and sand dollars. When they finally heeded her calls to the beach they were shivering and salty, their hair knotted and woven with the ocean. She enveloped them in bright blue towels and instantly the smell of the sea permeated the material. They drove home with the heater on full and Kid Rock on the radio.

A few weeks later, after the chaos of that September had unfolded and became something of a normality, if you could call it that she found the memories. They weren't in the smell of the fried fish as they walked home after school, past the roadside cafe. It wasn't in the soft sniffles of her youngest daughter at night whilst she recovered from the cold she developed from bathing in the sea. No it wasn't in any of the most obvious places. At night with the log fire burning and her feet tucked under her, when she reached for her book to snatch just thirty minutes of quiet, it was there. She turned the pages sometimes, just to see it. At each subtle movement, a couple of grains of sand fell from the creases of the paper. It was enough to instantly transport her back to that one day without fear. And the book? She never did get to the end of it.
:iconkaz-d:
The only way I can really write lately, is by putting aside my memories of an event, and instead taking the stance of somebody else and what they might have thought. By this token, this isn't fiction. It's ultimately nothing but the truth, and the feelings and emotions were exactly the same, but I put myself in different shoes. I'll never know if it was completely like that.
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:iconsoulsearcher1on1:
*soulsearcher1on1 Dec 18, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
Interesting enough to let each individual see it in a very different way, allowing us all to empathize but have their own idea of the memory
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:iconkaz-d:
^Kaz-D Dec 19, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
Yes indeed! :)
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:iconsoulsearcher1on1:
*soulsearcher1on1 Dec 26, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
:hug:
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:iconrubies3:
~rubies3 Nov 8, 2012
I can see, smell, hear, feel, and taste everything seamlessly. Wonderful!
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:iconkaz-d:
^Kaz-D Nov 18, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
:) thank you again, I really appreciate the comments!
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:icondaghrgenzeen:
Mood: Love =Daghrgenzeen Sep 20, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
I seem to be saying this about all of your works, but... beautiful. It's so great that you can take such gorgeous photographs, as well as create wonderful writings.
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:iconkaz-d:
^Kaz-D Sep 23, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
Thank you very much again :blush:
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:icondaghrgenzeen:
=Daghrgenzeen Sep 24, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
You are most welcome. :aww:
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:icondani-the-naiad:
~Dani-the-Naiad Sep 19, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
I love this! The sensory in it is fantastic and I love your descriptions. Just great writing. :heart:
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:iconkaz-d:
^Kaz-D Sep 19, 2012  Hobbyist Photographer
Thank you :) I love that you get my writings :heart:
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