Stolen – Friday Fictioneers

Here is this week’s entry into the weekly challenge brought to us by the lovely Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. 

Here are the rules: Use the photo as inspiration, write a hundred(ish) words – and share! Here goes my offering for this week – and I welcome your comments again!

copyright-erin-learyCopyright – Erin Leary

– Stolen –

The skeletons of trees and bushes stand stark in the pale light of a winter morning. The mist hangs low in the valley, shrouding it in mystery.

I remember mornings like this from my childhood. I recall my fascination at the bejewelled spiders’ webs – they sparkle in my imagination, lighting up my mind’s eye.

Appearances can be devastatingly deceptive. Beyond the protective glass, the land is dead. The scorched trees have failed to come into leaf for twenty-seven seasons. We have no reason to expect anything different next year.

We have destroyed the only world we will ever inhabit. There is no turning back.

—-

Click on the blue froggy below to read others’ offerings!

Ripples

When the words don’t come easy
When inspiration evades me
When I must gouge every word from my bound and stitched mouth
When the rhythm’s distorted
When the rhyme pattern is thwarted
When confidence is eroded by crippling self-doubt
When I shrink before mastery
When my skill is unsatisfactory
When my fountain of words is foundered by drought
That’s when I lay my soul bare
That’s when I let myself care
That’s when what I put there on the table is me
It’s my heart, soul and body
It’s what pushes and drives me
I’m a poet, a writer, and words set me free.

Threshold – dVerse Meeting the Bar

Here’s my latest entry into the dVerse Meeting the Bar. This week, Gay is asking us to reflect on ourselves, think about how we talk, what we say, reveal a little piece of us in poetry form. I confess, I found this tough, tough, tough. This year, life in the Freya world has been turned upside down, and then all the pieces put back in some form of random order, so I’m not really sure who this ‘me’ is. I think I’m at a chrysalis stage, just deciding what butterfly I’m going to be (positive spin, do you see?).

So, I’m not sure if I fulfil the brief, but better some words than none at all. I do use the language, it sounds typically British as well, I feel (a bit stilted, somewhat diffident, perhaps)?

Do visit the other poets who take part in this wonderful community… you’re in for a treat!

*****

– Threshold –

Being at a crossroads
Or maybe halted by a sudden fork,
not sure which direction I’ll follow,
even where the turn will take me
when I blink and look again –
I’m not sure of myself
Nor do I understand which me I am.
The work me is part of it
But what is the other me like?
How do I behave?
What do I do, or say, differently
when the responsibility is
sloughed off as I walk through the front door?
Some days, I bring it home.
Not my work concerns per se
Just the demeanour.
I think it’s time for a reinvention.
Long overdue, frivolity has been a stranger at my door.
Perhaps with jollity’s return,
the prospect of a new beginning
won’t leave that taste of fear
on my tongue.
The taste that stops the words
seeping out.