“I move my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my own mind across another,
I am with my mother’s mother.”
- Annie Finch, from “Samhain”
The veil between this world and the Otherworld is at its thinnest at this time of year. Write a story or poem or song in which your speaker/character interacts with an ancestor (or ancestors).
Have you ever noticed how private
a wet tree is
a curtain of razor blades
Love me because nothing happens.
— Leonard Cohen, from Parasites of Heaven
Write a poem or story that begins with “Have you ever noticed…”
Make it ten lines long.
Include an unlikely metaphor, this to say, use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities. (i.e. wet tree as a curtain of razor blades).
Use one example of synaesthesia (mixing the senses).
Include a stranger.
Include the colour purple.
but what if I,
had harmed, love? I howled this out,
and on my glasses the salt water pooled, almost
sweet to me, then, because it was named,
the worst thing - and once it was named,
I knew there was no god of love, there were only
people.
- Sharon Olds, "The Worst Thing"
Today's prompt is inspired by Sharon Olds: "The worst thing." Whatever form this takes for you. <3