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Here's today's prompt:
13
On the map of my life I have coloured in a long, blue river. It runs underground in places, forcing its way through rock, but ahead, always, the open sea.
42 comments:
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Sometimes I lie there drifting with the water in my ears. Other times I rehearse the inevitable by slipping below the surface. Occasionally I swim desperately, frantically against the tide.
ReplyDeleteOh I wish I was calm like you. Not shooting everyone dead at their desks with a machine gun, pumping them full of bloody holes. I wish I was calm.
ReplyDeleteYet fear of the open sea, its sharks, its storms, its shadow-thick depths forces the river back underground drowsing in the comforting soil, meandering and twisting, never ready to surge.
ReplyDeleteThe open sea is a fearful place. There are men on a trawler and I am frightened that they will catch me in their nets. Sometimes, I can't see them. They disappear behind walls of waves, coming and going. Sometimes, it is the spray that obscures my view, merging with the heavy, charcoal clouds as they fall into the water. I imagine that I am catching my toes on the sea bed, on sharp rocks and crabs claws. Long, slimy tendrils of seaweed grab at my ankles, begging me to join them at the bottom.
ReplyDeleteI look at my map but it is smudged and I can't hold on to it or I will be sucked down. For a second, I envisage myself disappearing inch by inch until only my fingertips trying to keep the map from saturation are visible. But no one's watching. Except maybe the trawlermen, of course and I don't even know if they've noticed me at all.
So the map's become useless and I've lost my bearings. Real seafarers use compasses but I'm not real, am I? The needle swings haphazardly, begins to rotate and then before I know it, it is spinning so fast that I can't see it. Just as I thought that the sky couldn't darken any further, a shadow engulfs me. I am expecting the blanket of death. I can smell salty fish, taste wax. But there is a softness, a rasping breath. A beak, yes, a beak. Perhaps it is the stork coming to take me back. No, I know this creature although we've never met. The albatross.
He scoops me up in his beak. We soar upwards, away from the jagged sea and I forget that I am cold. I am relieved. Neither of us will be bycatch. This time.
Another blue breath day-
ReplyDeletethe gift of life
past or present,
on a coastal road
ghost whisperers gather-
old souls reborn-
with each heartbeat
mapping the sound of the sea.
echulme@hotmail.com
The Grand Canyon's an awe inspiring place. One tiny river carving its way through rock - a sliver here, a micron there. Down the millenia. I need to explore its depths.
ReplyDeleteIn 1858 London was near-abandoned. Sewage dumped in the Thames caused the Great Stink.The capital was uninhabitable. Thank Joseph Bazalgette of blessed memory for his unseen sluices to the sea.
ReplyDeleteI've no compass, or map. The signposts are worn, indistict, confusing. I've no guide, so muddle through my life as a consequence. The shining horizon beckons - promising a better future.
ReplyDeleteI am learning to go with my gut when smelling roses, jasmine, BO, the odd whiff of rotten-egg gas; how easily odours can turn and undo what the eyes see.
ReplyDeleteThe torrents have subsided, rapids far behind me. I watch the feeble, metronomic twitch of the ultramarine delta on my wrist. Is there yet enough courage to burst the banks?
ReplyDeleteIf life could be laid out like a map
ReplyDeletewith mountains as the pinnacles of success.
I would need a GPS system
to find a way out of the trenches.
The copious, lengthy book of my life,
ReplyDeletereplete with serendipities, struggles,
open ,blue with buoyancy,
floats, not submerged, dashes rocks
dives into the mighty ocean of
Oystered pearls and wisdom.
I dreamed of a closed sea and when I awoke, not understanding, I opened books: the letters swam a river before me and so I resolved to learn to read.
ReplyDeletePerhaps there are
ReplyDeleteDark men, palm beaches, champagne and swinging chimpanzees. Perhaps.
All I can see is a palm where the veins form blue rivers flowing back to your heart.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI type ‘Happiness’ into my Sat Nav and am shocked by how far away it is. At least it looks like one straight road. I release the handbrake and accelerate.
ReplyDeleteRunes on your skin,
ReplyDeleteblue rivers beneath it,
torrential, disobedient.
But when I slide my hand over your belly,
slowly, so gently,
the flows freeze,
fires die,
you walk away.
The open sea behind me loses distance, head above water, weighed down by loss. On dry land, saved by the soothing balm of laughter, I age; check the calendar daily.
ReplyDeleteMary Rose.
I took a felt tip pen to draw the line of water. Squeaky marine blue on an old photocopy. My sea fell off the paper, spilling on the kitchen table.
ReplyDeletesusanna - we can't actually edit comments which is why your posts have been 'removed' from where you added them, but we've reposted your response above this message, minus your email address.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes.
This river was life until the dreamers came.
ReplyDeleteThey gave it power in the night,
crashing rapids to reach the sea.
Now it hunts man,
no longer tamed by mountains.
redjim99
Jimbarron@walkauvergne.co.uk
Your life-map was rather like an Internet route-finder, she felt. The main roads were clearly indicated, but it was the unmarked side-streets, blind-alleys and road works that caught you out.
ReplyDeletefreya_scott@yahoo.com
Spice trail - cumin - saffron - garam masala - pungent aromas fill the air - I leap noisily - one sensation to another - rainbows of flavours - jangling like bridal bangles on a young woman’s wrist.
ReplyDeleteJacqueline Smith
A glacial melt, a mountain spring, a drip, a rivulet, a delta. And every year the salmon drive themselves upstream, leaping waterfalls, battling currents, fate, the surge of the inevitable.
ReplyDeleteFrom Sandy Andrews:
ReplyDeleteThe sea is turbulent.
As far as the horizon surf flies hindward from waves racing
to shore.
Inland, swollen rivers overflow their banks, make lakes of
fields. Change the map.
In the shed we made dandelion and burdock with muck and spit. Watched it dribble down the side of blue plastic cups. Stirred it with twigs and glass. Long ago.
ReplyDeletedebbiemrgn123@yahoo.co.uk
I remember my new wax crayons drawing your red smile on a pink face.
ReplyDeleteI remember you colouring me in solid black, then scraping slowly with your fingernail.
Uncovering me.
From Douglas Bruton:
ReplyDeleteCALEDON’S SAY
He calls me Caledon and thinks he makes me up. He gives me height and hair and hunched shoulders. And a way of talking with all my words stiff and unnatural. I don’t know why he does that. Any of it.
He tells you about a girl and the touch of her hand on my arm. As if it’s something important. And it is. And the girl at least is real, though he keeps her faint and indistinct, pushed to the background and reduced to that touch of her hand. Light as a bird or moth. It doesn’t even make sense when you read it.
He’s a writer. That’s his excuse. And that’s the mask he hides behind. Hides from you and from her, the girl he says I love.
Truth is, she reminds him of someone, a girl he loved once, when he was young and love was new. And she did lay her hand on his arm, then and now. I saw it happen, saw this girl he won’t even name. And isn’t it strange that he keeps that hid, doesn’t even invent one for her, a false name?
And she laughed and flashed her eyes at him and played her fingers again and again though her hair. And he was too shy to say what he thought or what he wanted. Not till later, on the bus journey home, whispering so no one would hear. And he said that was me.
And later he wrote it all down, in a small notebook he keeps by his bed, the whole hidden map of his life. Except I am always at his shoulder, and I have seen it and read it, every blue-inked word of it.
He calls me Caledon. It is short for Caledonia, where he is from.
Parcelling up my worries, I drop them into the river and watch them float towards the distant sea. There they will bob, like a message in a bottle, before sinking.
ReplyDeleteMy teenage mood sailing close to the wind,I tack to and fro between adult and child.You are there to navigate me back home and into safe harbour,always.
ReplyDeleteColouring in her grey life, she gave the bank manager a pink ice cream, the checkout girl juggling balls, herself a red bouquet and her blue neighbour a cheeky smile.
ReplyDeletei sat staring at the river. it never stopped moving. i sat and listened and the sound went on and on.
ReplyDeletei glimpsed infinity today. and now, i am forever.
Wispy, silvery strands
ReplyDeleteRun smoothy cross planes and crevices
In a forehead gleaming with nature’s
Own devices
Of watery glands, grime and sweat
Of excessive reflections
Dipped in genuflections.
Amen.
Colleen
coll @ literaryspot.com
I am a roadmap, a blueprint. Lines mark my body, leaving paths along my skin. Red ink runs inside me, preparing me for more pathways and the years to come.
ReplyDeleteJamieson Wolf
jamiesonwolf@gmail.com
All the water under the bridge of a lifetime is a rich seam for the prospector of a thousand words to pick at, in his quest for the mother lode
ReplyDeleteI've never mapped out my life. Everything I ever wanted I always got.
ReplyDeleteI should be happy. But I'm not.
I'm too scared that it will all be taken away.
Look at my love song:
ReplyDeleteAll pixie dust kisses,
Midnight dancing with dreams;
Sailing on sunset;
Soft skin behind knees.
Who knew this would happen
When two hearts became three?
This direction or that, I could not decide. The main road looked promising with its wide open spaces and winding ways. I can see for quite a distance and there seemed to be little danger of being waylaid by mishaps, or robbers or wild beasts. The Kingsway, you can almost see the castle from here. I was certain we would arrive by midafternoon
ReplyDeleteBut, as I turn in the other direction I can just barely hear the sound of a lute playing somewhere in the shadows of the tall trees. As I look further down the wooded path I can see a deer step out onto the path. Surely if there was danger lurking there she would not be wandering so openly. There is a river further down this way I’m told, amidst tall ferns, and there is a tale of a shallow place with a golden beach where the waters are warm and healing.
That is the great draw for me. As a small child I had fallen from the parapet of my uncle’s manor and had been badly injured. The trip from my home to this place was long and painful. It had taken more than two days to get here. I would have never come had it not been a summons from her majesty. But now I debated whether to go straight to the palace or take this short detour. It would surely take no more than an extra hour or two and I could perhaps be healed from this pain forever but the letter commanded that I come to the palace as quickly as possible.
“Mistress, shall we continue to the palace.” The driver was hot and dusty from the journey. I knew that he would benefit from a little rest in the shade as well.
gngbenson@gmail.com
The map of my life and X marks the spot, like a kiss.
ReplyDeleteDiscover me but know I can't be polished. My dull patina ingrained, a blot on your landscape.
Steam billows from the water gushing over her hands. The brush bites into her skin, and her blood flows into the water, mingling with his. She feels nothing but relief.
ReplyDeleteFrom Douglas Bruton:
ReplyDeleteCALEDON’S SAY
He calls me Caledon and thinks he makes me up. He gives me height and hair and hunched shoulders. And a way of talking with all my words stiff and unnatural. I don’t know why he does that. Any of it.
He tells you about a girl and the touch of her hand on my arm. As if it’s something important. And it is. And the girl at least is real, though he keeps her faint and indistinct, pushed to the background and reduced to that touch of her hand. Light as a bird or moth. It doesn’t even make sense when you read it.
He’s a writer. That’s his excuse. And that’s the mask he hides behind. Hides from you and from her, the girl he says I love.
Truth is, she reminds him of someone, a girl he loved once, when he was young and love was new. And she did lay her hand on his arm, then and now. I saw it happen, saw this girl he won’t even name. And isn’t it strange that he keeps that hid, doesn’t even invent one for her, a false name?
And she laughed and flashed her eyes at him and played her fingers again and again though her hair. And he was too shy to say what he thought or what he wanted. Not till later, on the bus journey home, whispering so no one would hear. And he said that was me.
And later he wrote it all down, in a small notebook he keeps by his bed, the whole hidden map of his life. Except I am always at his shoulder, and I have seen it and read it, every blue-inked word of it.
He calls me Caledon. It is short for Caledonia, where he is from.