I haven’t been able to participate in the SECRET KEEPER’S WRITING PROMPT for a couple of weeks. I simply couldn’t miss another week. So this week I am determined to make time, plain and simple.
Our prompt words for the week are:| WORTH | SPARK | PLOT | QUAKE | SPY |
Here is my Tanka prayer called Love On Me
Love On Me
by JE Lillie
Divine spark plot your
Course. Anticipate my fear.
Spy out my quaking
Heart. Undo my sabotage.
Let me know at last my own worth.
It’ s time for SKWWP#24 (The Secret Keeper’s Weekly Writing Prompt #24). You can find all the submissions to this challenge by clicking the underlined link. My bit is below and it is entitled:
A Lover’s Heart
By Je Lillie
Walk another mile
With me old friend. Your promise
To take the long view
Still stands. Let’s beat the odds by
loving each other like God.
Our buzz words this week are | WALK | OLD | PROMISE | VIEW | BEAT |
This week’s offering is a tanka.
Tanka poetry rhythm is 5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7 in one stanza. Many times tanka poetry focuses around the theme of love and relationships.
Let me ask, who do you think is the narrator in this poem and who is he/she speaking to? Who else could it be?
THE SECRET KEEPER has released his weekly writing prompt and I am ready to frame my newest shadorma. Click the link above to discover what other secrets are being kept by our host.
Our prompt words this week are: | STARE | RIVER | HOLD | TRUE | WEAR |
Summer River
by JE Lillie
Hold me fast
With your languid stare.
Bind my gaze
Reflection.
Summer River tie me there
By the bank of lies.
_
Heated days
Wear that smile. Call truth
Deception.
Vernal days
Tell me falsehoods if only
To restore my peace.
_
Current flow
Wash away the days
Of facing
Perception.
Let warm waters reassure
Ignorance is bliss.
Shadorma (3 – 5 – 3 – 3 – 7 – 5)
six lines – no rhymes – multiple stanzas [your choice] – just follow meter
I am joining in on a new challenge today hosted by Roger Shipp. His blog can be found HERE ALONG WITH THE STORIES OF HIS OTHER CONTRIBUTORS.
The photo prompt for this week is…
And our opening line is, “You lookin’ at me?”
The Careless Prince
By JE Lillie
“You lookin’ at me?” The mirror said in its best Brooklyn accent.
” Hey you wit da horns stop ya starin’.”
If it had spoken in an English accent, even French, I probably would have tumbled to the fact that I was in the house of Brunhilde. But everyone knows magic mirrors don’t come from New York and well witches are supposed to be all bumpy and scaly not super- modelesque.
Then again Charmings are not supposed to be plumbers. But after the glamour wars the royal family fell on hard times and hiding out as day labor seemed to be the thing to do.
Cindy had called us not three weeks ago and told us that the witch was hunting heads again, but I didn’t take it seriously. I should have listened. I wasn’t under the sink five minutes before Brunny was waving that wand of hers, turning me into a deer.
Cindy wasn’t kidding. Brunhilde was hunting heads. She cut mine off and stuck it to the wall. Now I can only stare into my reflection and listen to the mirror practice his shtick for the next prince who walks through the door.
The SECRET KEEPER has issued our next writing challenge. Our buzz words for the week are:SENSE | SECURE | WALK | TIME | ALONE |
This week I am choosing to put out a flash fiction piece.
The Cliff Walk
By JE Lillie
She has been gone seven years. Still I often come to this place alone to walk along the craggy shore line. I can sense her in the salty wind that whispers through the air with all the poignancy of a lost love, taste her briny kiss across time like some backhanded rejection. It hurts like the shutting of the casket, but I long for it if only to keep her memory alive.
This place, our place, where we first held hands. I remember her smooth fingers slipping against my calloused palm as I helped her over the sea-smoothed rocks to the ocean’s edge so she could wade in the surf. I can still see her holding the legs of her jeans up, trying and failing to keep the ocean from anointing her with the holy water of reminiscence. She laughed. I laughed in those days before, when the Cliff Walk along the ocean’s edge was not a knife to the heart. Still, a knife to the heart is better than feeling nothing and so I have chosen to return year after year to conjure, if only through tears, the time forever lost.
This time is different.
I climb to the pine-encrusted knoll where we last stood together. I think of that day. Her thin frame was already a ghost held together by bones and tumors, almost gone but not quite. She held my hand like always that day.
“Find someone new.” She whispered.
“Stop.” I said.
We both cried. Her head scarf was lost in the breeze as we kissed for what was to be the final time.
Wiping away a tear I remove the urn from its satchel. I tilt it ever so slightly and let the wind take her ashes.
“Good bye.” I say again, but this time I mean it.
A gentle hand caresses my back. I feel her lips touch my shoulder. As she puts her arm through mine I can see, in the moonlight, she is weeping with me, grieving alongside me. I am secure in the knowledge, my wife would have liked her.
Here is another posting for Rochelle’s Challenge, FRIDAY FICTIONEERS. This challenge involves writing a 100 word story from a photo prompt provided by Rochelle. You can click the underlined link to read Rochelle’s story and those of her contributors.
The photo prompt and my story are below:
Photo by: ceayr
Behind the Bamboo Curtain
by JE Lillie
My memory is long. As far back as I can remember it has always been me vs. him. Nephew vs. uncle. Reynard vs. Isengrim.
We have amassed and lost fortunes to each other. Throughout history The fox has outwitted the wolf. The wolf has overpowered the fox. He is stronger. I am smarter.
I think though, I have finally lost. He has trapped me behind this bamboo curtain. The magic woven in keeps me in human form. To weak to transform I cannot heal from the knife he has thrust in my back. Reynard, the fox, at last is dying.
For more on Reynard the fox…
Here is Ken’s weekly post from the C.cada corner. Our next C.cada meeting is Saturday Jan. 16th. All artists from all genres are welcome.
http://artistdayapart.com/mind-over-matter/#comment-1028
PHOTO PROMPT © Melanie Greenwood
It’s time to write another bit of flash fiction here at Friday Fictioneers, the place where 100 writers use 100 words to write 100 different stories about 1 picture.
Thank you Rochelle for your time and effort here at Friday Fictioneers. I so appreciate this exercise in word-smithing!
Check out Rochelle’s other contributors by going to her site HERE
The Most Important Thing
By JE Lillie
Les stepped on to his private jet for the first time. He poured himself a drink .
“We’ll be readying for take off in five sir.” The pilot called.
Les sat and buckled in. As his belt clicked into place he was back at the mini-van buckling his son in for the last time.
“I don’t want to go with them Daddy.” The boy said.
“Your grandfather’s a rich man Elias. He can care for you better than I can.” The door slammed shut on Elias’ cries.
The chauffer reached into his robes and pulled out an envelope “The amount agreed upon. Your plane awaits.”
This week THE SECRET KEEPER has given us these five words to help us in our creative process:
| WAIT | MEET | TEAR | ACCEPT | CEASE |
Based on these themes, I have chosen to write a a short story this week entitled:
“Braided”
by JE Lillie
I gazed into the mirror hardly recognizing the man staring back. My beard had gotten long and gray.The hair that lay over my shoulder in that long braid was threaded with the same silver that speckled my chin. I looked so tired and old. When had that happened?
The answer flew to mind immediately…no delays there. Life had changed a year-and-a-half before when she left to “find herself”. I wept. I shouted. I begged. I threatened. Nothing worked. She packed and was gone.
That’s when I began the fast. I made a Nazirite vow that day. Maybe it was a little extreme. Maybe it was a little Old Testament. Maybe I couldn’t do the sacrifice part with the lamb, but the rest I was determined to accomplish. I was going to show God I was serious about wanting her back.
In those first months I sent flowers and cards. I called her cell and texted when she wouldn’t answer. I spent my mornings and evenings begging God for her return.
About month five, I began to hear that Inner Voice repeat again and again “They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.” I studied the verse from Isaiah; Ruminated on it. I learned that the word “wait” meant to be braided together with God, intertwined completely with His will.The day I learned that, was the first day I braided my hair symbolically to embrace God’s will whatever it was.
Somewhere in the journey the fast stopped being about my marriage and started being about me. In the braiding and unbraiding of my hair a hundred times I learned I was not the man I should have been. I stopped crying for her return and started crying for my own return to the true Lover of My Soul.
She was getting remarried to a good friend of ours even as I looked into that mirror and saw the old man before me. That hurt, but I knew one thing. I no longer needed the braid. God’s will had been done and in spite of my pain I was at peace with it. And that was worth waiting for.
I took the scissors and cut through the braid. It was time to move on.
It is 2016 and time once again to SHARE OUR WORLDS. This is week one of the sharing and you can find out all about folks in the New Year by clicking on the underlined link. OK maybe you won’t learn everything but you will learn something and as they say “that is something at least!” 🙂
Ready? Set? HERE WE GO……
As a child, who was your favorite relative?
My favorite relative as a child was my cousin Michael. He was imminently cool. He was closest to my age among the cousins (at least the ones I knew well) and I saw him quite often. I don’t think he felt the same. I was four years his junior definitely not cool and his mother had to baby sit me and my sister. So I guess looking back there were times he didn’t appreciate me as much as I appreciated him but that has changed over the years. He and his wife are now members of the church where I pastor and his daughter is one of our church pianists.
If you could be a tree or plant, what would you be?
I would be a date palm. Big and sweet.
What would be your preference, awake before dawn or awake before noon?
Oh gosh I am usually awake before dawn now and that is most definitely not my favorite…. but awake before noon? 😦 I guess if that could include waking up between 8 and 9 A.M. I would choose that. Sleeping until like 11 feels like such a waste of day light.
Would you like to sleep in a human size nest in a tree or be snuggled in a burrowed spot underground?
Oh underground please. I have always wanted to live in a Hobbit Hole!
photo by: http://www.backpackingearth
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I am grateful that I got the 20 pages of back story done for my publisher!
This week I am looking forward to helping at Special Touch REACH New England’s outreach service and I am also looking forward to helping my friend Deb Maciorowski from http://debbestillandlisten.com/ move into her new apartment. Hopefully she will be back writing again soon.
Lillie-Put 