PRACTICE
For this writing practice, use the following creative writing prompt:
Write about longing.
Write for fifteen minutes. When you're finished, post your practice in the comments section.
And if you post, please be sure to give feedback to a few other writers.
Photo by Bhumika Bhatia
Here's my practice:
I used to long for deserts. I used to long for long horizons filled with nothing but red dirt and white, effacing skies. Destroying yourself can be beautiful too, and I imagined myself staring into sunsets in that place and forgetting my life entirely.
I longed for less because I didn't have enough and wanted to erase my need for anything. And because of the sharpness of my longing, it had color and form, filled with contrast and sharp line. It was a Picasso; its shapes fractured and fragmented by the strength of my desire. I miss my longing.
Because I don't long for deserts anymore. Instead, I want cities. I want tall buildings fill with beautifully apportioned rooms, bookshelves stacked with color, plays in the evenings followed by cocktails and warm conversations with friends, Ann Arbor, with its excess of accessible culture, parks where I can watch my daughters play. This is the dull, muddled longing of the already content.
Desire is the spice of life. What do you do when you get what you want? How do you cope when what you miss is the longing itself?
Umm, really? YOU seriously want to share my fifteen minute sprint on Longing? *fans self* It is quite steamy actually, I took the prompt in a erm physical sense.
I think you’re wise to second guess this, Ellie. This is the wide open Internet, after all. Write it and put it in your novel. Or… ?
Hahaha well, maybe you can share the pg-13 version. Kids read this, after all.
So where can we find it?
Ummm, no fair. You can’t tease us like this. Can we have just a taste?
Maybe this is really your way of showing (not telling) us what longing is all about? 😉
I long to finish.
Starting isn’t the problem for me. I long to raise my hands in victory knowing the marathon is over— at least for today.
Blogging is too easy. Too much instant gratification. Put a post up and you immediately have comments, Retweets and likes.
A slow grind is needed to create anything of lasting value. But I opt for the quick fix. I long to stick it out. To keep writing despite the fact that 90% of what I write will not last. I long to strive for the 10%.
I long to finish, despite my fears. If the end result is garbage, then it’s garbage. But the value from the process itself will be lasting.
So what’s the take away? It means to quit stalling and talking about the work. I have to sit my butt in the chair and do the work. Less Facebook. Less Twitter. Less of what I want to do at times.
So I can do what I really long to do—finish.
So much truth in here. Great writing, Jim.
Thanks Marla, so kind of you to say. Thank you!!
I agree with Marla4, this is great, and full of truth! Get that grit, and get that finish!
Thanks so much. That’s the plan! I think it’s hard to want to grind it out when I know a HUGE portion of the writing is going to go bye-bye.
Joe, care to chime in? I’m sure you’ve faced this many times over. Thanks!
How honest and deep.
Thanks so much Jamie. Really appreciate that!
I know what you mean Jim. I’ve been longing to finish as well, but do we ever? And in the end, do we actually want to? Working towards that goal is familiar. What will our lives be after we’ve achieved our dreams?
Really loved this practice. Good job!
I look at it as completing steps (sometimes baby steps) in a journey. And you gotta start somewhere right? I so appreciate the encouragement Jeff; I really do. Thanks!
This is original and true and motivational, I’m sure, to a lot of us procrastinators and dreamers who find it hard to FINISH! Readable, accessible, no doubt as to what you’re saying — good work.
Thanks John! I really appreciate it. I think this is my style and I honestly can see me expanding this and making it a blog post there. Really appreciate the encouragement!!
So true Jim. I identify with this completely.
Wow, I totally relate. This is inspirational. Thank you. You should blog it.
Me and my own 50,000 words really want you to finish, so we can follow right along.
Great piece!
Joe, you write so beautifully. I’m longing to write like you. 🙂 Come to New York City, you want tall buildings, theatre and cocktails, hey New York is the place man. Now me, I like nature, space and peace. 🙂
It sounds like we should switch places. 🙂
I took the Xanax first, and I chased it with gin. I wanted to feel the way I did when I was
with you, when we lay beneath the shifting light of the sugar maple, awash in
fall. On those days, on the quilt so old
the red had faded to pink, the black to gray, and I traced your lips with my
finger. I traced the ring of white where your wedding ring should have been but
wasn’t, tossed as it was into the ashtray of your Tahoe on your way to meet
me. I ran my own finger around the pale
circle of your skin like it was a map of what would make me whole.
I am loopy now, dulled by the drug, sated by the
liquor. I doesn’t work, this ceremony of
spirits. I don’t feel electric the way I
did when you pulled me to you. This thing I liked best was not how it made me
feel but the way I must have felt to you.
My tight muscles, my small waist, my hair like a dangerous road you lost
your fingers in.
When the phone rang on those risky days, I held it to my
heart before answering it. The rap on my
back door sent shards of light through me.
I’d open it at odd hours of the early morning, not having slept, dressed
in feathery gowns and sharp heels and I’d lead you in, your destiny there in my
bedroom, I thought, and I’d undress you, the taut lashes of your shoes a
challenge always.
I think of you now, how the light caught sorrow sometimes as
we moved together, because there was always light – the sun, the bedside lamp,
the moon. I shunned it the way you do the homeless man with a spray bottle and
a dirty rag who runs to your car when the traffic light shows red. It came back, of course, the sad moments, the
secret held between us, and you were not equal to it, and you sank back into
your ordinary life.
I drive by your house, a predictable Tudor. The front door
has been painted turquoise, there’s a cozy covering your trash can, and the wreath
on your door is gaudy with fall leaves and shiny baubles. Your wife must be a Pinterest addict, I
think. She must log on, crazed by the
possibilities of quippy sayings like “Keep calm and drink a pumpkin spice
latte.” She must stay up late, pretending that an organized pantry is the same
thing as a good marriage.
If I were her, I’d kick it up a notch. I’d take a drink now and then. I’d read “Fifty Shades of Grey” and buy a
whip. I might even leave you, like you
left me. I might throw away my glue gun
and the twelve feather boas I bought at the Dollar Tree and hit the road. It would unfurl, it would, full of
possibilities, like a fresh notebook on the first day of school, like a heart
before it’s ever been broken.
Marla i love this, I had to put on “Blanket on the Ground” while I read it and I know it isn’t quite the right sentiment but it just shrieked at me possibly by “country Roads”.
All I sang today was Rock of Ages!
Suzie, I love your replies! You always say the kindest things. I love “Blanket on the Ground.” And “Rock of Ages.” Last night I got to hear Alan Jackson, and I felt like I’d been blessed.
Marla, okay, you slayed me with the line where pretending that an organized pantry is the same as a good marriage. And you didn’t just stop at reading reading 50 shades, but adding a whip into the mix of changes was so flippantly cool. Also love that she/you drove by the house, and found it unsurprising.
Makes me wonder why he left you… or if he is just that kind of guy. Sad but funny story, and I am glad you shared it and glad I read it.
Wendy,
How sweet of you! I figure this guy is a serial cheater, and his wife kind of knows it but doesn’t want to give up the lifestyle, or maybe they have kids.
I read 50 Shades. OMG. Such bad writing! Have you read it?
“Gah! I’ve read it,” Wendy murmured, the long index finger turning of my inner goddesss doing back flips as she turned each page.
Have to admit I did feel the connection between the main characters, however repetitively E.L. James described it.
This is incredible, Marla. I agree with Wendy – that organised pantry made me smile, there’s a whole character just in that line… ‘how the light caught sorrow sometimes as we moved together’ ‘it would unfurl, it would, full of possibilities, like a notebook… like a heart before it’s ever been broken.’ Your writing hits my heart, every time.
I long for horses, apple orchards, old
cemeteries, dry creek beds, child’s forts, and hard-packed paths in
the forest. I long for the silo with the cement wall where we ran in
quick circles until we fell into the fermented hay. I long for the
cow skull and our roadside museum with the dead bat and the fungus
off the tree. I long to find newborn kittens again, wedged into a
pocket between hay bales. I long to smell hay and cow dung, dust and
tractor oil.
I long for one day accountable to no
one, off the grid, lost on a mountain path, granola in pack, sketch
book, paper, pencil, watercolor splash. I long for tiredness that
comes from exertion outside, climbing and pushing, not fixing and
weatherproofing.
I long for babies, still fatty and
fresh. I long for the the perfumed head and warm formless weight of
them, molded to the skin of my neck. I long for the closeness, the
tugging, the need, the slowing down of it all.
This is beautiful!
Thanks Marla, I heard a rendition of “Country Roads” this morning, and it brought me back.
I really like the flow and spacing of this. I really enjoyed the 1st two paragraphs as they gave me a sense of freedom and wonder. The third one is really good too, but it doesn’t seem to fit as well as the other two. The first two paragraphs seem to flow seamlessly together.
I think it would be really cool to have a picture of the country with the first paragraph (or two) underneath.
Thanks for all of the encouraging comments!
Gorgeous writing!
Absolutely beautiful!
The pace of this drops you right into a slow country day and help the reader walk right beside you.
How beautiful and evocative!
I love the line about kittens. This is so good. Almost like a song.
You have some created some really great imagery. My favorite is: I long for tiredness that comes from exertion outside, climbing and pushing, not fixing and weatherproofing.
Sounds like you long for the simpler life, without overtly stating it. Good work!
The Longing
In
the middle of the night was when it was at its worst. The rest of the day it
could be blocked out with work, play or other activities that kept my mind
occupied. But it was still there, in the back of my mind, capturing my senses…needing
to be fought off.
Today
has been totally different. I didn’t think about it at all for most of the
morning. I was totally absorbed in getting a new project off the ground. I was
in and out of meetings with my co-workers, consulting with my boss and totally,
completely engrossed in ferreting out the details of the implementation. I was
having a fantastic, finally free day.
And
then, it happened! An aroma drifted into my work area from some cubicle,
somewhere else on the floor. My nose actually twitched at the first hint of the
smell. I tried hard to block it out. I was determined not to give in. Then my
legs began to feel restless and my stomach began to gurgle in just the
slightest, smallest way. Soon it had captured my mind and I began to
capitulate.
First,
I sat up straight and looked out the window. Then I grabbed my freshly filled coffee
cup and put my nose near hoping to drown out its aroma with that of the coffee.
Instead of driving out the unwanted smell, it combined with it and brought back
the scent memories. Then I closed my eyes trying to think of some remote beach
somewhere out there where these smells wouldn’t reach me.
I
found myself on my feet, searching, hunting for the source of the aroma. I
turned the corner of a not too distant row of cubicles and there it was. Or at
least there it had been, three people were just finishing them off with their
own coffee. They saw me. They smiled, waved and told me I was too late. They
had eaten them all. I smiled and waved back before turning and walking slowly
back to my desk.
As
I walked slowly back, an urge began to build up in me. I had been fighting this
urge for a long time but, at this moment, I could resist it no more. From the
coat rack, I grabbed my hat and coat and then I headed toward the door.
Resistance
was futile. I was going to get my own fresh, hot maple bar with bacon on top.
Mmmm, now I’m longing for maple and bacon. I read this piece just before lunch and I think it’s actually what sent me out the door to get lunch! Speaking of maple, you wouldn’t be a fellow canuck, would you?
Thanks, Missaralee. Not a canuck but I do live very close to BC. Glad you enjoyed it and hope you had a great lunch!
When will they get home? Why have they been gone so long? This girl only comes by every few hours takes me out to go to the bathroom and sometimes takes me out to play. Man my hips hurt. I have to pee every half hour and she comes by every three. Thankfully it dries on the kitchen floor so no one notices.
When will my people be home? Why have they been gone so long? Do they miss me at all? Oh look, shoes, they belong to my lady. She’s one of my people. She loves to snuggle and pet me and throw the ball for me. This girl who comes by takes me out to play and is more excited to go inside than anyone I know. I’m fifteen years old, had a stroke, am blind it one eye and am deaf, but I love to go outside. She’s still a pup for crying out loud, she should love being outside. It’s the best, well it was the best.
When will my people be home? Why have they been gone so long? Am I stuck with this girl forever? Maybe if I act like I’m in pain she will take me to the vet and they’ll put me on some great pain killers then time will go by a little quicker. Man my hips hurt. BALL! Playing inside? Really? It’s not even raining. Look I’m in pain, fake the limp, who am I kidding she doesn’t notice. Fine, I’ll play inside, but it’s going to cost you. You know those Toms you just bought? I hope you want holes in them. I may be fifteen but I still love to chew stuff.
When will they get home? Why have they been gone so long?
Aww, poor puppy. Great use of his perspective to express longing!
I laughed at the line about the girl who just wants to be inside. I guess she can’t get a good wifi signal in the yard. The dog’s worry for his people to come back gave me this ominous feeling that maybe they wouldn’t be coming home at all…
Ha! That’s hilarious.
Aw. This is funny. I was wondering why he was fifteen and had a stroke!
I long for the times when you were never very far and the warmth of your skin felt like an extension of my own, the crook of my arm your favorite resting place. Back then I could discern your thoughts and desires by the tone of your cry, the subtle expression on your soft round face. It was all so simple back then when your sweetly curled head had to tilt back to gaze into my eyes.
As you grew and words took the place of mysterious gurgles and expressions, I was helpless to prevent that first disconnect. No longer needing me to read you I watched the years flatten the rhythm of our sacred dance, transforming it into something stilted and awkward. Instead of walking, you ran, often away from me or anyone who would dare demand you comply with anything other than your own agenda. And yet, occasionally a skinned knee, a runny nose, a bruised ego would send you back into my arms again. I longed for those moments. Although you physically grew bigger, in a strange way my heart saw you get smaller, the way one sees a silhouette as it walks down a long road at sunset. Smaller and smaller until eventually it is no longer visible. As if it has vanished into thin air.
Now nearly a grown man, I tilt my head back to look into your face, angular and rough with angry acne and emerging whiskers. Your needs and desires are a mystery to me now. Who are you little boy? Where did you go? I long to know you again…
This is really well done, Lisa.
I love the transition of the first paragraph into the second. I’ve never thought about how the intuitive connection of parent and baby could be severed by the development of speech, and essentially a child’s growing ability to choose what they share with you.
I do think the second paragraph runs on a bit and shaving it down could help keep the overall precision of the piece, but other than that I was really impressed by this practice. I’m obviously not a mom, and yet I felt a real connection with this, which speaks volumes about how well it’s written.
So beautiful, so true.
Nicely written.
How this makes me miss my babies too, all much taller than me now. Thank you for this Lisa.
Oh, well done! That was exquisite.
As my sons are still small, I see that as a vision of the future…
The longing for being a “mommy” instead of a just the mom in his life is definitely well communicated.
Loved the grouping of skinned knee, runny nose and bruised ego together.
Just purely grammatically, a couple of modifiers had me reading the sentence again.
“Now a nearly grown man, I tilt…” I think you meant that to refer to your son, but at first it jumped me to thinking you were actually a dad.
Agree with Jim about sharpening some of the tempo. Beautiful as is, but I think it could be just as heart-felt if the strongest words stood more on their own. ie: I watched the years flatten the rhythm of our sacred dance into something awkward and stilted, reads more powerfully to me without the added description. Just my opinion, but that was a line I really latched onto, and read really well.
I am a mom whose kids still call me mommy, but already I feel the simultaneous pull on me and away from me. Sounds like it both sneaks up on you and happens suddenly. Thank you for sharing your insight.
Great writing. You open up one of the heartaches of being a mom and make it real to those who aren’t. I love this – ‘I watched the years flatten the rhythm of our sacred dance, transforming it into something stilted and awkward.’
This is very touching. I especially love “Although you physically grew bigger, in a strange way my heart saw you get smaller, the way one sees a silhouette as it walks down a long road at sunset.” It’s absolutely brilliant.
It wasn’t planned. Not really. I was just out taking a walk,
down along the beach, taking in the day. The waves here on the bayside were
just tickling the shore, soft shushing sounds above the slap of my flip flops
on the sidewalk. Sunlight poured over me the same as it had before, though now,
my shadow stretched itself in front of me, alone. The gulls overhead floated on
the breeze, their voices echoing the ache in my chest.
And then I heard it. A laugh. A deep chuckling that rumbled
out of a barrel chest and poured like acid over my bruised heart.
“Funny meeting you here,” he said.
I looked up, and up again. I had to shield my eyes against
the sunlight glinting on his sun-streaked hair and sunglasses. “Oh,
hi.”
Brilliant!
He gestured to the woman at his side, her smile filled with innocent
humor. She leaned against him and asked. “Are you an islander or a
tourist?”
I brushed at my faded shorts. “Islander.”
She gestured to the shoreline. “It must be wonderful
living here all the time.”
I glanced at him again. “It can get a little lonely,
but yes, mostly it’s wonderful.”
“Guess we’ll be seeing you around,” he said in
that casual way that meant he didn’t expect it to happen.
“Yeah,” I replied, and added, to her. “Enjoy
your stay.”
They continued on their way and I stayed where I was,
listening to their quiet voices until the words were washed away beneath the
suss-suss of the waves. But nothing could wash away the wish that he’d stayed.
With me.
This is really good, i was longing to read a bit more – well done.
I love the description ‘suss-suss’ of the waves. Nicely written.
I love this! I love the ‘ soft shushing sounds above the slap of my flip flops
on the sidewalk’ ..i heard it in my head when i read it. I also LOVED the fact that she brushed her shorts when asked if she was a tourist or an islander…like she was embarrassed…loved it!
The dialogue was so spot on. I don’t know if it is, word for word, an actual conversation that took place, but it felt so true.
My favorite:
Guess we’ll be seeing you around,” he said in that casual way that meant he didn’t expect it to happen.
So relatable.
Very cleanly written and intricately woven.
O Heart of mine, telling me what I would not hear. Screaming that yes of course I know what to do, but my mind won’t make itself up. You ba bump bump and send me dreams and visions of the one I would long for. Of the angelic face that breaks your rhythm and tears your walls. You say “there, there he is, say something, run to him” but no, the Mind has no heart of its own and shuts out Heart’s cries.
In the labyrinth of my Mind I am convinced that I could never deserve him. That he is far above me, far too good for me. Its byzantine circuits find it easier to settle on a boy of no gentlemanly learning than to believe in the possibility of fire. But you, my Heart know how to burn. And you would gladly do so, bathing all the world in a rosy hue.But oh, my brains are too clever for their own good. That grey matter would turn all the world to grey and in that monocromatic world of the possible and the likely, the Mind would sit with its quick fingers on the trigger of the fire extinguisher, ready to douse any unseemly sparks.
I love your imagery. Such abstract thoughts and ideas are hard to visualize, but you made it possible. Great job!
Thanks Bronson!
Very apt description of the conflict between emotional and rational — and the questionable sense that we’re not really competent unless the unsentimental “grey matter” wins out, is the guard with its “quick finger on the trigger of the fire extinguisher, ready to douse any unseemly sparks”. I would think this would resonate with many readers!
I love the feel of this piece, the fight and the imagery. It has a different flavor than most of your pieces that I recall. More like poetry. Your word choices are interesting too and make me think, tears your walls, no gentlemanly learning, byzantine circuits, douse any unseemly sparks. They give an old fashioned flair.
This reminds me of a poem by Emily Dickinson which starts: Heart – we will forget him!
I really enjoyed this, especially the last bit about the mind dousing the heart – it was all evocative, but the final few lines were beautiful!
You have a beautiful way with words. There is something almost seductive about this. By this I mean, in my opinion, that you have a way of attracting the reader and even invoking emotion. Stunning.
LONGING
~ 15 min practice
I’ve
been seeing and learning and feeling for sixty-five years now – to some it’s a
very long time, this lifetime. But, for
the first time in my seemingly short-lived life, I’ve begun to remember many
things that I will never experience again.
I long for the feeling of that first meaningful kiss, the invisible hand
that reaches deep inside me and touches feelings not aware of until that
kiss. How wonderful it would be to realize
once again that I am in love, and all of the possibilities and experiences
before me with this very special human being.
His illusive smell, unexplainable, that made my head swoon and want
more. I long for that first touch of his
hand to mine, that feels differently than any other, it feels genuine, like
love. I lie next to him now, and
sometimes I can smell that essence that was his when we were young, it takes me
back to that carefree time when we both thought that we’d live forever. I long for those nights when we lay in bed til
the sun rises, talking and planning our lives together.
That elusive smell, unexplainable, that mad my head swoon and want more… It’s odd how it fades with age doesn’t it. You expressed exactly what I’ve been longing for. So well written, that wanting for youth that creeps up on one as we get older. I like that line about “my seemingly short life” too. It really underlines the aging.
Jeremy set the open bottle of wine down on the table with a thud. “Prove it!” and turned on his heels slamming the door behind him.
She longed for a drink so much, did she love Jeremy enough to keep away from it? She did her “flylady” chores finishing with the kitchen sink and began the “keep the Va va voom in your marriage” chores. She spent longer with these, to prove to herself as much as Jeremy that she was all-in. In high heels and matching jewellery she was prepared.
The bottle sat, being red its aroma was beginning to pervade the room. She opened a window but moths came in so she tried to shut it. Weird things happen, and this was weird. As she leaned over the sofa to close the window her necklace caught in the faux brown leather whilst her stiletto heel banged into the table knocking the wine bottle which shattered on the Moroccan marble tiles, her head jerked up and in some crazy twist of fate, she landed face down in the pool of wine and glass.
Jeremy came home at midnight to find his bride of less than six months sprawled lifeless in a puddle of bloody wine. The coroner said her skull instantaneously fractured on impact with the tile. There were no toxicology reports available. Jeremy spent the rest of his life believing she drank herself into a stupor and tripped. He longed for closure but it never came
That’s so sad! Desire seems to torment more than satisfy, whether for an object or a person.
thanks Beck
Oh my gosh. I thought this was going to be funny and then the twist. This is great. Tell an Arkansas girl what flylady chores are. I love that term!
okay there is this woman I discovered years ago on tinternet (lancashire for on the internet) and I used her tips to declutter my house and then I let her go.
Last week I found her again – her main thing is shine your sink and the next is – it didn’t take 15 minutes to make your house a mess so just touch it little by little and it will become clean again.
http://www.flylady.net
Marla I bet your house is peachy clean!
Love a good twist, and this definitely had it.
I’d change one sentence slightly…. insted of “so she tried to shut it”, I would indicate that she went back to close it. or something else that doesn’t indicate upfront that the shutting won’t work.
The resistance of her longing led to a lifelong longing of his. Very poetic, and yet still a very strong story.
Very good piece of writing!
I used to long for the perfect man, the man I would recognize immediately as my soul mate, the answer to my loneliness, the man who complimented my finer points and I his. The problem was that I did recognize him. I recognized him everywhere. I even married him; I married him three times. It was never the same man I recognized “as him”, but always a different face, a different profession, each time a completely different person. I would swoon at his feet. I would act coy. I would put on my smartest face. I would stumble all over myself to be seen, to be noticed, to make him love me. I found them all lovable, amazingly good-looking and kind. Each evening, alone, I thought over their words and the cute way they smiled at me, looking for evidence of their love for me. I would write in my journal: “Steve really is the nicest guy, I really do love that guy; I wonder if Dave will call me tonight, we had the best time last night; Jack just had a controlling mother, he’s got to sort a few things out, he will see that we are perfect together.” Sometimes it would be years between this one and that one but other times it was only one day from one love to the next. My first marriage lasted less than two years, my second five years.
The truth is that I really was falling in love with the same guy over and over again. The guy I fell in love with was the one that made me work for his affections the same way that my Dad did. I fell in love the final time on the day Dad died, this time to a man who loved me back in the same way I loved him, openly and freely, no reservations. My third marriage is forever.
You really captured the longing for completeness. My take is that maybe you weren’t for a guy to complete you, just someone who thought you were completely enough ‘as-is’. Or maybe I am just talking about me…
Very emotional writing…
When I was young, I dreamed of being a bride. I wore the dress-up costume and lace curtain as a veil and wanted more than anything to be a beautiful bride. When I became a bride, although not beautiful, I felt uncomfortable, cavorting about my church in front of my family and friends as well as people I had never met or heard of. I desired marriage like the thirsty desire water; I wanted to be a complete person, loved by someone for myself, not because of some kind of familial tie. That tie can bind! After a while, I desired a date. I think more than meeting someone, I wanted to get ready for the date, I wanted to wallow in the preparation for that guy who would come to my house, ring the bell, and be happy to see me. I desired a movie with coffee afterward. Of course, my coffee came with a wedge of pie. I did not gain weight then, nor did the caffeine keep me awake or jittery. Years later, I desire that wonderful date, and all that preparation before it. And most of all, I desire leaving that date at the door and going about my life — until the next date and the next. Come to think of it, I think I could be quite the single person again. …
This made me smile…I thought of that phrase “be careful what you wish for”…I like the way you haven’t actually said you changed your mind, but it is obvious from the text.
I kind of took more than fifteen minutes, but here is the poem that resulted from the prompt:
http://ajwagoner.com/2012/09/14/for-the-world/
The river from that high bank on his uncle’s place, and the sense from his deepest animal being that his time was infinite and that his generation really would change the world.
Alone in the backseat of the family sedan, her smile and the glint in her eyes as she leaned closer and murmured, “Prove it.”
The ability to cry easily and without embarrassment.
The rich goodness of American southern gospel music, the belief in a heaven where all of it would be put right by and by.
The black poodle puppy who bonded with him who-knows-why and loved him without reserve until the day she died sixteen years later, grey-haired and no longer able to walk on her hind legs from one end of the house to the other.
The chance to be someone else.
Their romance before they had to go and get married.
The conversation of that night, unfinished, irretrievable — final.
My gosh, this is gorgeous. And the poodle killed me, the way dogs can. I love this.
Beautiful.
Very well written… beautiful. 🙂
Thank you so much for your encouragement. It encourages me to keep trying.
No problem. You have an undeniable talent with words. Keep it up. 😉
“I want to see mountains again, Gandalf — mountains.”
Perhaps that’s the real reason I chose to attend a little college in a little town cupped in the Shenandoah Valley. Even though I could “climb every mountain” and “ford every stream” in sight of my dorm and probably not break a sweat. The Appalachians of Virginia are rolling and blue and beautiful — the bones of a mighty prehistoric range higher than the Himalayas — but they’ve got nothing on the Alps of my childhood.
In that way, I suppose they are like my childhood. Remnants of soaring dreams ground down by time. Snow-capped heights across a cold and impassible ocean. Rock and wilderness and darkness under deep pine, where meeting elves and fairies and wooden men was still within the realm of possibility.
Untamed. Mountains still vibrant with the sound of music. Mountains whose voices have not yet been smothered, who will never fall silent.
I long to wander off the trail eating bushes upon bushes of wild mountain raspberries.
I long to ski down a black diamond with the fearlessness of a child, kissing the wind.
I long to build fairy huts in the woods again.
I even long for the humor of taking a shit behind a woodpile halfway up a trail, miles from a bathroom and always alert to the danger of surprise attacks by spiders.
I long to attend services at the tiny white church that gleams on the summit.
I long to be struck to tears by beauty again.
I long to revisit the mountains of my childhood.
I long for a getaway, an escape from the mundane life of the city. I long to be surrounded with the beauty of nature. I long to hear the sound of waterfall flowing peacefully, birds enjoying freedom and singing their songs. I used to long to sit by the beach and watch the sunset go beyong the horizon, but in the past few years my connection with the sea changed a lot. Every year I hear about people who lose their lives by the same source I used enjoy sitting near. My longing has changed for a safer place where I my feet can stand firmly on the ground. I long to hug my two sisters, and one brother who are away from home. I yearn for peace in my country, a safe and beautiful sky not tainted by drones and F-16s. When I think of the things I long for, the list almost becomes endless.
This is spare and lovely and made me want to read more.
You make me wonder about her history (is it a she? I read it as such) and where she is. And how people lost their lives at sea? Through battle? Piracy? As refugees that never make it?
It makes my longing feel pretty small when dones and F-16s are more constant than songbirds.
This took me more than fifteen minutes. Because I’m a cheater.
He sat in a shady corner of his cell, staring at the sunlight punching through the window cut into the stone. If he stood on his slop bucket, he could touch the lip of it with his fingertips. There were no bars that would keep him from climbing through it. The warden had mentioned it during his orientation.
“Freedom is there,” he had said and pointed to the window. “Should you ever want it.”
A yellow-faced verdin flew into the cell and looped once around before returning to the mouth of the window to chirp at him. Corso groaned.
“A mockingbird would have been more appropriate…,” he said to no one in particular.
The bird flew away at the sound of his voice. He frowned and eased into the crook of the walls. They held him like a mother. Like his mother. He slumped to his side and reached a hand out of the shade to rest on the hot stones of his cell floor. It burnt. Appropriately.
His mother. He wondered if she knew where he was. If they had told her what he had done. More than Lyssa, more than his sons, he wanted to see his mother. At least he did today. In the end, all he really wanted was a taller bucket.
Jeff, first off let me say I appreciate your honesty… 😉
As for your piece, I thought it was quite good. I like how you wrote of longing without actually using the word specifically. Your sketch draws upon the universal theme of wanting your mother when you are suffering or in despair. It also left me wondering what put Corso in prison (?). I wanted to read more. Good work…
Thanks for the kind words Lisa 🙂 Honestly, I’m wondering what put Corso in prison myself. Maybe I’ll write more on this character in the future.
(Couldn’t log in with my usual twitter account because I’m at work, haha)
You cheater.
Great practice, though Jeff. Is this part of a larger work? It sounds like a fun story.
Thanks Joe! I wrote this specifically for the practice, but I might write more on it some day 🙂
Love the character name: Corso.
Not sure I get how freedom is his if he ever wants it? Is this some kind of bargain deal? Or is there just a threat of being shot if he ever tries to escape? Or the bucket just tall enough from him to grasp the escape, but never actually own it?
I liked the bird and temperature references. Built the setting of the cell very well. Good writing.
Thanks for the compliments Wendy 🙂 I’m really happy with the name Corso as well.
As to what the warden says to him during his orientation, it was meant to be mockery. The window has no bars on it, meaning he could just crawl through it, but it’s too high for him to reach. It’s a form of torture, similar to the Sky Cells in Martin’s Game of Thrones.
The last line remarks “all he really wanted was a taller bucket,” because of this fact.
Great writing! ‘Freedom is there… should you ever want it’ – what a line.
(sorry, it’s not 15 minutes!)
But great challenge, Joe!
Longing for Hope
My
thumb strokes the screen of my phone like it’s my one beautiful
treasure. I swallow the dry and dusty air and blink for a few seconds
to clear my vision. I adjust my neck and watch the steam rise off the
horizon. My eyes squint at the blinding brightness of the wet road and I
gaze at the shimmering black pavement as the water vanishes in all it’s
trickery.
Why won’t he call? I ask, I beg. Surely it will be now.
Now that it’s night and he’s tired from the day. Just before he lies
down on his cot, before he takes off his boots, before he closes his
eyes.
I close my own, praying, praying, praying that it’s not the last time.
I
wish hope would swell in my soul like the sweet song of a robin as the
sunrises. I wish I could feel reassurance that, even if he doesn’t call
today, tomorrow, or the next day, he could.
But as I open my eyes again and sigh at the monotony of the road, all I
feel is a coldness creeping inside my heart. Perspiration runs down my
brow and I wipe it away from my eyes. It should be tears, not salty
sweat.
Instead
of replacing my sunglasses, I throw them into the seat next to me and
squint out at the never, ever ending brightness. This is what it’s like
out there where he is.
All dirt and dust and death.
The rise in the rode sparkles with the mirage of water. The sweat trickles down like tears.
I
press the button and the windows roll down, the wind washing over me
and whipping at my hair. I reach for a rubber band to tie it back and
remember that I threw them all away the day after I met him. ‘Your hair
looks great,’ he said, ‘don’t put it up. Let the wind play with it; it
won’t blow away.’
A wave of nausea rises in my throat and I press my hands into the steering wheel.
Why won’t he call? Can he call?
I curl my toes in angst and beat my hand on the steering wheel.
‘He’s not going to,’ I tell myself. ‘Why would he anyway? We’re just friends.’
I
convince my muscles into relaxation, but my heartbeat still throbs
away. Just friends. Does he know that my heart beats for him?
How
could I not love him? He who sits alone, out of place, his distant
eyes purged with sorrow and hurt. He who laughs and breaks a smile at
every joke, afraid his pain will break through. He who lives through
death over and over and over. A year, a month; eighteen months, then
six; so often gone that he calls fear a comfort, death a casualty,
desolation his home. Today could have been his last; he could be at
rest for eternity.
With
one last sigh, I slip my phone into my purse and watch the sun drop
lower and lower and lower until it barely touches the horizon. The
desert wasteland is golden in its glow and in the distance I see the
glints of metal. The outskirts of the city?
I reach for my phone when it buzzes and I pray, not looking at the screen.
‘Hello?’
My heart races in anticipation and I can feel the beats in my ears. My
eyes scan the lights, hoping it’s a city. But the buildings are so
alone, so hazy. A mirage?
‘Hello?’
I repeat. Is it him? The number is Unknown. Him? ‘Hello? Is someone
there?’ Please. Be there. ‘Hello?’ Once more, hoping, longing,
knowing.
I wait until the other end hangs up and the phone drones like the loss of heartbeat on an ECG.
As the sun dies in a sea of crimson and violet, the lights of the city vanish.
I adjust my lights and take a breath as night takes the throne.
The sounds of silence, of breathing, of the life that bore the heat of day crawling out into the cool of the desert.
He won’t call…but he could. I blink away the tears. He can. He has to open his eyes.
I squeeze my phone then let it slip into my lap.
Over the horizon I see a light.
In my heart, I know it’s true.
First, one, as miniscule and dainty as a star. Now seven, eighty, a hundred, thousands.
He will. He will wake.
I smile. I hope.
Over
the horizon fell the sun. Around the earth to where he rests his head.
His eyes closed in sleep. He will open them with the morning.
As the lights of the city flood my view, I let the tiny beam of hope fill my heart.
Your detail and heartbreak and hope are amazing. Such intricate work. So beautiful.
Beautiful description and such strong emotion in this. I love the setting of the desert too, ties in nicely with one of last week’s posts!
He catches me staring at him, but I don’t hold his gaze as you see in the movies. Nope, I look away almost as soon as he sees me. When I look back, he is back to his conversation with his buddy.
I look back down at my book, trying to appear interested. Five minutes past before I realized I wasn’t reading a word. The longing to feel good enough to catch Mark’s attention held my mind captive. I would never be productive if I sat here, within ten feet of the object of my desire, without being able to obtain it. I slapped my book shut, the sound reverberating horribly throughout the room. Red faced, I glance in Mark’s direction and to add to my embarrassment, he is now looking my way again. This time, he smiles.
Oh no! I can’t take it. I can feel the heat flowing up through my neck and into my cheeks. It figures, the one time I can’t look away from him is the one time I am scarlet and glistening with inadequacy. I flick him a tiny smile and shrug, as if to say, “Woops, sorry I interrupted your important sports conversation. It’ll never happen again.”
I toss my bag over my shoulder and hurry away, slamming my thigh into the table’s edge as I turn. I don’t even stop to massage away the pain. I just want to be alone. Where two minutes ago, I was longing to be sitting next to Mark, pretending to be interested in baseball, I now simply long to be as far away from him as possible.
I emerge into the darkness of the street and finally have a chance to stop and still my racing heart. I prop myself on the wide banister of the massive marble stairs and begin rubbing my bruised thigh. I’m consumed with shame and pain as I wait for the bus.
I absorb the distant drunken chants of weekend party-goers then, much closer, the soft, tentative cough from behind me. The longing is back.
I’m a cup overflowing with longing. I’m using this prompt to develop a character though. So here it is, so not me.
I’ve never been one for longing. It takes too much, carrying aroun that possibility of paradise if only … that horrible despondency that might come if not …
I’d rather plan for what I know I can have, set goals I know I can attain.
Of late though, I’ve begun to feel that maybe there could be more between Jeremy and me. Or, to be exact, that there had been more.
I can’t put a name to what it was.
It would be nice though, to have it back.
Well now I want to read your story. I love the line that reads, “that there had been more.” Now I’m all in. Tell me more.
Love how this character can be matter of fact in one sentence and a dreamer the next. I love how you name her object of affection. For some reason, this made me connect with your story more.
Great length of sentences and phrasing, which led to good pacing! Well done.
I am longing. Longing for my love to be returned. All my life I have kept busy, never concerned with earthly matters. Yes, I have had a few lustful ‘moments’ and yes I have suffered for them too but this time…this time it’s ‘different’ and new.
My love is now a quarter of the way around the world and never to return. We were in such close quarters but we never really touched. I respected that…I was longing for the day that he would wake-up to my beauty. He, now a quarter of the way around the world doesn’t know what he wants..longing is a distant dawn for him I suspect.
For a while after he left I was angry and confused, my head blocked from my heart and my heart from my head, and ,then, it dawned, my longing contacted me…my longing felt the well-spring of love that was always there through difficult times.
I know I love him now and it took a separation to find that out….but is he longing for me or just sunny climes?
Does not knowing make the longing stronger? ordoes it strengthen the ties that bind?
I guess I will find out in time.
Longing by Suzanne D. Williams
It was only a weed, a daisy-like flower sprouted in the
crack in the pavement. Yet I could see how it came to be there, how some bird
or critter scattered the seed into that spot of soil. I saw how it stretched
and grew consumin’ the air, nourishment, and water it craved ‘til it burst into
flower.
He and I were like that flower. Like that one afternoon when sparks jumped between us and I knew and he knew how it’d be. Like our young love, newly wed, that only desired the next glimpse, the next touch, the next taste of each other. Like love fed and watered, which became a beautiful thing, a garden of pleasure and delight.
An’ it swept over me. I pictured him as real as he ever was – his fingers runnin’ through his dark, wavy hair as he smoothed out the cowlick, which always formed over his ear; his eyes crinkled at the corners like they was wont to do when he laughed; the salty taste of his skin as he reached for me, his callused palm caressin’ my face. My eyes stung with the image, and I mourned through tear strung lashes the memories of my past.
Bendin’ over at the waist, I plucked a flower from the weed and held it out before me. The scenes nearby faded away: the rows of flags reflected in the ebony stones, the people clustered around its base, the soldiers in their shiny uniforms pacin’ back and forth. My daughter wrapped her arm about me. My granddaughter stood at my feet. But it was he and I again and nothin’ before us but time and age and each other.
The flower wilted in my hand, its stem curlin’ over my thumb, and the years passed between us. I pressed my fingertips to the cold wall and traced each letter of his name, each curve and angle a symbol of who he was then and who he remained to be. Then those forty-five years he’d been missin’ seemed like nothin’ at all. Nothin’ against the size of the space he occupied in my heart.
My daughter squeezed my shoulder and laid her head against my cheek. “They’ll find him,” she said. “They’ll find him, Mama, and he’ll come home.”
‘An I believed her.
Sorry for the multiple posts. My computer went nuts on me. I hope you like the story.
I read the prompt, but had no time tow wirte until a few hours later, so this story was brewing for a while. I hope that it doesn’t count as cheating. Also, whenever I write about an emotion, I challenge myself to not name it in the passage.
His tousled hair and tanned muscles were
straight from Central Casting. Through the lens he was the eye-candy hero that
made any female aged above twelve sigh. The camera loved him. My camera, in particular.
His brown eyes flirted with my camera, with me. I went through miles of film,
taking more shots than I would for any other model. Shirt on or off. Staring straight
at the camera with a boyish twinkle. But most of all, looking past me, at a
point on the horizon, deep eyes melancholic. His trademark wistful gaze.
When the photographic equipment was packed
away, I drew my courage and asked him if he cared to join me for a drink – aren’t
I the Modern Woman? He looked past me, and shook his head, a half smile on his
lips. I smiled, and felt like the gawky sixteen year-old again. Why did I ever
think a demi-god would ever be interested in me?
I watched him walk away. He stopped, and
turned, his eyes following my assistant, Andrew. He drew his breath in as
Andrew waved to his fiancé and greeted her with a kiss.
Now I knew where his pain came from.
What a great quadrangle! Nice
I love how you wrote like a camera, showing us the perspective of the narrator, and holding back from the model’s view until the final cut. Loved this.
Longing by Suzanne D. Williams
It was only a weed, a daisy-like flower sprouted in the crack in the pavement. Yet I could see how it came to be there, how some bird or critter scattered the seed into that spot of soil. I saw how it stretched and grew consumin’ the air, nourishment, and water it craved ‘til it burst into flower.
He and I were like that flower. Like that one afternoon when sparks jumped between us and I knew and he knew how it’d be. Like our young love, newly wed, that only desired the next glimpse, the next touch, the next taste of each other. Like love fed and watered, which became a beautiful thing, a garden of pleasure and delight.
An’ it swept over me. I pictured him as real as he ever was – his fingers runnin’ through his dark, wavy hair as he smoothed out the cowlick, which always formed over his ear; his eyes crinkled at the corners like they was wont to do when he laughed; the salty taste of his skin as he reached for me, his callused palm caressin’ my face. My eyes stung with the image, and I mourned through tear strung lashes the memories of my past.
Bendin’ over at the waist, I plucked a flower from the weed and held it out before me. The scenes nearby faded away: the rows of flags reflected in the ebony stones, the people clustered around its base, the soldiers in their shiny uniforms pacin’ back and forth. My daughter wrapped her arm about me. My granddaughter stood at my feet. But it was he and I again and nothin’ before us but time and age and each other.
The flower wilted in my hand, its stem curlin’ over my thumb, and the years passed between us. I pressed my fingertips to the cold wall and traced each letter of his name, each curve and angle a symbol of who he was then and who he remained to be. Then those forty-five years he’d been missin’ seemed like nothin’ at all. Nothin’ against the size of the space he occupied in my heart.
My daughter squeezed my shoulder and laid her head against my cheek. “They’ll find him,” she said. “They’ll find him, Mama, and he’ll come home.”
‘An I believed her.
I love this…it’s so sad, but I still love it. I love the analogies (if that is the word I want…maybe similarities?) between the touch she remembers and the touch of the flower curling round her thumb and the letters carved into the wall. Very nice!
Thanks!
Beautiful and heartbreaking. Great writing.
Thanks so much!
I love the weed/crack/sidewalk/flower imagery strung throughout. I thought it was going to be about a relationship that soured, but if I follow correctly, turned out to be about how life went sour when he went missing?
What dialect were you writing in? Southern? I have a really hard time writing in a dialect, and sometimes a hard time reading it. I think a great place to splash it in is in dialogue, more so than in narration, because then I don’t have to make sure that every single word I write matches the accent.
When she was tracing the letters, I really wanted to know his name. You got me invested in the story, and hooked me. Great job!
Yes, it’s about a spouse missing in action. I have a fiction novel out to that effect, and I’m afraid there are still too many names missing. I write in Southern dialect a lot. It comes very naturally to me. I heard this story that way in my head, so I went with it. Glad you liked it.
Thanks for the feedback, Suzanne. This was so moving, with so many beautiful lines how you used imagery. Great piece.
YW. And thanks for saying something about my piece. It was a good exercise in writing.
Longing by Suzanne D. Williams
It was only a weed, a daisy-like flower sprouted in the crack in the pavement. Yet I could see how it came to be there, how some bird or critter scattered the seed into that spot of soil. I saw how it stretched and grew consumin’ the air, nourishment, and water it craved ‘til it burst into flower.
He and I were like that flower. Like that one afternoon when sparks jumped between us and I knew and he knew how it’d be. Like our young love, newly wed, that only desired the next glimpse, the next touch, the next taste of each other. Like love fed and watered, which became a beautiful thing, a garden of pleasure and delight.
An’ it swept over me. I pictured him as real as he ever was – his fingers runnin’ through his dark, wavy hair as he smoothed out the cowlick, which always formed over his ear; his eyes crinkled at the corners like they was wont to do when he laughed; the salty taste of his skin as he reached for me, his callused palm caressin’ my face. My eyes stung with the image, and I mourned through tear strung lashes the memories of my past.
Bendin’ over at the waist, I plucked a flower from the weed and held it out before me. The scenes nearby faded away: the rows of flags reflected in the ebony stones, the people clustered around its base, the soldiers in their shiny uniforms pacin’ back and forth. My daughter wrapped her arm about me. My granddaughter stood at my feet. But it was he and I again and nothin’ before us but time and age and each other.
The flower wilted in my hand, its stem curlin’ over my thumb, and the years passed between us. I pressed my fingertips to the cold wall and traced each letter of his name, each curve and angle a symbol of who he was then and who he remained to be. Then those forty-five years he’d been missin’ seemed like nothin’ at all. Nothin’ against the size of the space he occupied in my heart.
My daughter squeezed my shoulder and laid her head against my cheek. “They’ll find him,” she said. “They’ll find him, Mama, and he’ll come home.”
‘An I believed her.
It was only a weed, a daisy-like flower sprouted in the crack in the pavement. Yet I could see how it came to be there, how some bird or critter scattered the seed into that spot of soil. I saw how it stretched and grew consumin’ the air, nourishment, and water it craved ‘til it burst into flower.
He and I were like that flower. Like that one afternoon when sparks jumped between us and I knew and he knew how it’d be. Like our young love, newly wed, that only desired the next glimpse, the next touch, the next taste of each other. Like love fed and watered, which became a beautiful thing, a garden of pleasure and delight.
An’ it swept over me. I pictured him as real as he ever was – his fingers runnin’ through his dark, wavy hair as he smoothed out the cowlick, which always formed over his ear; his eyes crinkled at the corners like they was wont to do when he laughed; the salty taste of his skin as he reached for me, his callused palm caressin’ my face. My eyes stung with the image, and I mourned through tear strung lashes the memories of my past.
Bendin’ over at the waist, I plucked a flower from the weed and held it out before me. The scenes nearby faded away: the rows of flags reflected in the ebony stones, the people clustered around its base, the soldiers in their shiny uniforms pacin’ back and forth. My daughter wrapped her arm about me. My granddaughter stood at my feet. But it was he and I again and nothin’ before us but time and age and each other.
The flower wilted in my hand, its stem curlin’ over my thumb, and the years passed between us. I pressed my fingertips to the cold wall and traced each letter of his name, each curve and angle a symbol of who he was then and who he remained to be. Then those forty-five years he’d been missin’ seemed like nothin’ at all. Nothin’ against the size of the space he occupied in my heart.
My daughter squeezed my shoulder and laid her head against my cheek. “They’ll find him,” she said. “They’ll find him, Mama, and he’ll come home.”
‘An I believed her.
A cavernous ache has followed my heart around for years. Like death yawning for a victim, or the womb crying out for life. As the ocean hungrily laps the shore, never being filled. Indefinable, ever present, a hunger that gnaws at my bones. It’s on the tongue of every soldier in their darkest hour. On the mind of every bride.
It’s the haunting that draws me on, begging to be answered. It’s the hope that my soul will one day find it’s rest. It’s why I believe.
I am the psalmists kindred, “Lord through every generation you have been our HOME.” Psalm 90
Wow, what? This really makes me think and question. I feel am guessing what this is about, but not sure I am right? That the soul longs and lives beyond the capability of our bodies?
You created some great imagery… “death yawning for a victim”, “a hunger that gnaws at my bones”.
Definitely felt your passion for your subject.
Hi Wendy. I probably was more enigmatic than necessary! It’s just what came out and I liked the way it felt.
I was writing about the heart’s longing for home. My blog is actually entitled Beck Far From Home. Home has been a longing of mine for my whole life. I’ve moved close to 20 times in the last 36 years.
Actually I have a hunch that the human life, in some ways, is a search for home. I think the Bible sheds light on that theory. One way the Bible can be summed up is humanity’s birth in the perfect home (as told in Genesis), home lost (through sin), God makes a way back home (through Jesus), man’s quest for home (humanity’s history), home realized (the end of the world, recreation of a new one and our life with God ever after, according to Revelation). Perhaps a bit of a long explanation but a little of what was on my mind!
I love this! It’s beautiful. The images and the different simple descriptions of what longing is are spot on in my opinion.
(My first thought when I thought of longing was also a longing for home! I think from a song.)
I long to not be afraid.
Of what others perceived me.
I long to ignore
Of all the negative feedbacks or who i am supposed to be.
I long to be me
and not someone else, not what society thinks I should be.
I long to follow
My heart and my soul.
I long to believe
In my passion and my dreams.
and most importunely…. me
(first time writing this, don’t have the best writing, sorry)
I’d only change one sentence: the one in parentheses that follows your post.
…don’t have the best writing, sorry.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
You wrote from your heart, and most importantly, you bravely put it out there. Your poem was authentic and well done. So following that longing and don’t apologize for it. There is really no need. 🙂
Glad you joined us! Such transparency in your words, Aaron. And I really think that by posting this, you’re doing what you long for because it take a whole lot of courage to share your heart with others.
What I am longing for? I am longing for someone to acknowledge me. For someone to say something, whether it be ” your shit”, or ” your not bad, keep going”. I long to be seen, to be heard. I long for a mentor. A honest mentor, that would tell me the truth. Make me sweat, cry, bleed for the right wording. Someone that will aid me in this dream I have had since I was a child. I want someone to scoop me up in their hands and show me the way. Say something to me! Let me know that I am alive. Is that how a writer knows they live? through acknowledgement? Yep, I believe it to be so. I pour out my heart to this horrible world, then I am ignored. Do I ignore others? No, I never do. I find myself not sleeping at night, feeling others pain. No one feels mine. I feel alone, I feel abandoned. Why? Is this the way God intended it? No, it’s not.
Great piece Karen! Wow every word resonates with what I have in my heart and mind. I long to be acknowledged like the way we were back in school when our teachers would encourage us for the smallest things we did. I learned to keep a journal back in middle school and it has helped my writing a lot. I’m still struggling to establish myself as a writer with literally no one around for guidance. But if you keep believing in yourself you’ll make it. I’m on the same path struggling, but it’s sweet.
Wow, Helen. What an interesting course this prompt took you on, and you consequently took us on.
I admit to wondering something similar. If I write something, and no one reads it, am I still a writer? As much as I tell myself that exercises like these, and other forms of putting oneself out there, are for making me a better writer, feedback still feels like it, at least equally nourishes my creative spirit.
I long for a bright future; a future where the dreaded cloud of failure doesn’t cast its gloom over the landscape of my life, spreading murk over the sun of hope.
I long for a blackbird to perch itself atop a bough and sing its sweet song to pull my decaying heart out of the abyss of darkness it is in.
I long for my lover to hold my hands, intertwining her fingers in mine, looking at no one and thinking of nothing but me.
I long for equanimity during strife. I long for the candour and the courage to tell the truth. I long for goodness of my repeatedly smashed heart so that it may not bow down to the world’s will and fill with hatred…..
Wow, this is was dark but moving. I read longing for lightness, and admittedly, I can relate.
Very raw piece. Thank you for opening yourself up like that.
!! 🙂
I’ve been “longing” to write for this prompt, but haven’t had the chance until now, when everyone but me has moved onto the next prompt and then the prompt after that. But here goes…)
I miss his hands.
The first time he touched me, his right hand laced through my hair at the nape of my neck and his left hand dove inside my winter coat pulling me closer without hesitation or question. I buried my face in his shoulder and clung to him like this whole thing might slip away like a shadow without light. The air I breathed was so bathed in him, it was almost wet. Leather (from his jacket) and lust (from the scent of him and the cologne he wore because he knew it was my favorite). He was intoxicatingly sexy. And he was mine.
I hadn’t had the foresight to purchase waterproof mascara. But he cupped my face in his hands and kissed each inky tear of mine away. My cheeks flushed to match the heat of his lips. I sighed reflexively, and he swallowed it up with his mouth on mine. I teetered on tiptoe, but his strong arm wrapped around me and steadied me with his palm pressed to small of my back. His other hand held my face, as if I were the most beautiful raccoon-eyed girl he had ever seen.
I want him to touch me again. And again, and again, and again. Because each time he does, I forget that I live east and he lives west.
When we are together, no matter where together is, his hands lead me home.
Beautiful!
This is awesome Wendy. I can relate to the character here, my girlfriend living on the east coast while I live on the west.
“Every kiss in my life had been practice for this one; and each kiss thereafter would have this one to live up to. I sank deeply and desperately into his arms, lost in the unfamiliarity of being found.”
This paragraph in particular stands out. I love how well you say it’s the best kiss in the world, without just bluntly stating that. The second sentence steals the spotlight though. It has a poetry to it that I really enjoy. It’s fun to read and even more so to read out loud. The words roll right off the tongue.
Great practice!
Jeff,
Thank you so much. It’s so cool to think of you reading it aloud. Eveyone deserves to be kissed like that. If not every day, then at least once.
Good to know that you as a reader understood.
Happy Monday.
Wendy
I *love* this. So vivid, drenched in love. ‘lost in the unfamiliarity of being found’ – wow…
Aww, Zoe, thank you. Just when I feel like I am writing in the middle of a void wasteland, you sprinkle some commentary that makes me feel like my dust matters.
How is your own writing?
This has such depth that I can feel your words within my own life. Your longing is complex, yet stunning.
beautiful piece. thanks for sharing!
You have a lovely way of portraying emotion. You must be very in touch with yourself (or have an extremely vivid imagination) to be able to convey that moment so effectively.
#goals
Thank you, Ayla, for your kind words, and for allowing me to revisit this moment. 🙂
Two weeks back at work, two weeks away from home. I’m counting the days on last years advent calender until I can go back again. I feel a swirling confusion of nostalgia, loneliness and impatience. The accents here are odd with words I don’t understand. Even the hours are different. I long for home.
I miss the sodden purple mountains I walked on muddy tracks. I miss the people, my family. Nobody does extended family and connections like the Irish – “You know your one Mary, not Mary Sheehy, but John Joe’s wife’s cousin Mary MacCarthy? Well, she was off to Lanzarote this week, never more deserved by her after all her troubles, but barely had she landed and there was pouring rain. Her hotel even flooded! She and Mike, her husband – he works in the butchers on New Street – they had to move to a place down the road in the back of beyond!”
I even miss the currency, economic failure that it is – the harp on the back and the faces on the notes that recall history lessons or shreds of poetry or stories. I long to be home; it feels like I’m a picture without a frame.
This is beautifully written. Your piece reminded me of all the feelings I had when away from home – ‘a swirling confusion of nostalgia, loneliness and impatience’ – I felt exactly the same in the first year away from home. I love the Irishness of the dialogue, you get such a strong feeling of home. Amazing how just an accent can make you feel homesick or very much at home. Great last line.
Sometimes the feeling was so deep that it cut into the beginning of her words, and everyone looked up from their homework or newspaper or lego and stared at her. It was the rounded rage in her sentences they didn’t recognise. Usually she swallowed it down with morning pills and orange juice.
They were used to the image she slathered on every morning with the layers of foundation, and the thick eyeliner that turned the colours of her eyes luminous. Distract, hissed the voice in her head, distract as much as you can. And Jack never felt her tight muscles in bed as the hours rolled on because his desire to touch her dissolved years ago, with the new baby. His temperature rose solely from the Cardinals’ victory and Obama’s speeches.
The terror started just after conception when it woke her up from a dream where she cradled a powdered baby in her arms. The revelation took the breath right out of her. Her body would change shape. She’d never thought about it like that – all she’d seen was the baby, the gift at the end and forgotten that her body became the tent that the baby stretched bigger with every month. Jack slept soundly as she paced the floor, trying to erase the image in her mind. Eventually she grabbed a bottle of his Captain Morgan and took a few swigs to induce sleep.
If it weren’t for Jack, perhaps it would have been different.
‘I’m not hungry,’ she said over a plate of lasagna.
His eyes narrowed. ‘When last did you eat?’
She tapped her finger on the mahogany table and then stopped, looking up guiltily into his eyes. ‘Three hours ago.’
‘What?’
‘Fruit and yogurt. And nuts, a whole bunch.’ A spoon of yogurt, two strawberries and an almond and it’d still damn well go to her hips.
‘The baby needs food.’ Slowly, and patronisingly he spoke to her, like he’d grown old and she young.
‘Yes love,’ she’d say, cutting a chunk of lasagna and lifting it to her mouth and smiling perfectly. ‘Of course he does.’
Jack sat over her and watched that fork quiver to her mouth, her hate for him and the baby intensifying in every bite. Her career took only a month or two to dissolve – they never allowed the time for the fat to show.
And boy did she become fat. The waddling, the double-chin, the thighs that shuddered with her steps was too much for her. She had Jack take down the sharp mirror in the bathroom and covered the mirrored bedroom wall with black Japanese screens.
The mirrors still weren’t up, and no matter how thin Jack told her she was, how she’d lost all that weight at the gym and enough was enough now, she still saw her body lumbering to and fro, a tent caught open in the wind.
Very powerful!
Her despair and loss of self image is so clear!
Thanks, Plumjoppa!
I LOVE the first paragraph. The rounded rage in her sentences… a feeling cutting into the beginning of words.
Thank you, Ryuuzaki!
Joe, I love this prompt and your practise. ‘I used to long for long horizons filled with nothing but red dirt and white, effacing sky.’ – beautiful.
And I can tell other people really connected with this prompt too – SO much great writing. Been my morning treat to read it.
The Portuguese have a word, saudades, that represents a longing that goes beyond nostalgia. Saudades is something that comes upon one and possesses them much deeper than other feelings. One often thinks that not much happens in Portugal because people are struck paralysed by their longing. Their saudades.
When I think of saudades, as it is a greater degree of longing as we would call it, I am reminded of nights walking through Bairro Alto with B. and how she showed me her city, Lisboa. She had spent some time away and had recently returned.
We met outside of the theatre where we were both auditioning to be in an English-language musical. The conversation was struck up, her English being of the kind one might call “cut glass”. She spoke so well.
The conversation turned around, as it inevitably does when people hear my accent to nationalities.
“So, you’re an American?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied, “and you’re English?”
“No, I’m Portuguese,” she smiled.
What followed was a conversation about how gob-smacked I was at how well she spoke. It emerged that her mother taught at one of the international schools that British ex-pats send their children to, and she went there herself.
She had been dating a brilliant actor who was part of the troupe and I was in a long-distance marriage at the time of our initial encounter. We eventually became friends but somewhere in there she went off to Sweden, her boyfriend acquired a heroin habit which made him batshit crazy, and I separated from my wife. When she returned, we renewed our acquaintance, and went through a rather intense courtship.
And B. took me up to Bairro Alto and showed me her City from the viewpoint overlooking the Baixa and straight across to the Castle. And explained to me saudades.
One often links saudades to the fado music being played in some of the restaurants around Lisboa, where a singer sings along to a couple of guitars and sings their guts out about loss, sadness, the past.
She taught me how romantic her city was. And then one day, she went back to Sweden for an unspecified amount of time, and I went on with my wild life.
She came back once, and tried to convince me to go to Sweden to be with her when I left the Navy. However, I had already made plans to be with A., whom I had met in the interim, in London. B. came to Cascais where I lived, and we spent the afternoon in the cafe, hanging out with all of my slacker buds. We went back to my house and she made love to me. And cried when it was over, as we both knew it would be the last time.
I walked her back to the train station and she held my hand, whilst I tried to be discreet so that word would not get back to A. As she walked down the platform, I saw in her eyes that look of saudades.
And once again, I moved on with my life. Do I ever long for her? No. But when I hear a fado or think of Bairro Alto, I smile to myself, as I did learn the meaning of saudades, once.
The Meadow
Like when the days are so hot all you can think is “Get to the Lake”
through the city, and over the mts
The crisp cool air
Ahh, breathe, deep, breathe long
already better, already freer
Lighter up here; brighter up here;
Younger – in there
hearts let go and live
Used to pack the vanan overnighter
bag or two
Grab the kids, dogs, tents and inner tubes
whatever we need and if not, oh well!
We’ll make do
It took so much to go
But damn, it took so much more to stay
snow caps glisten, Rocky Mountain High
anything, anyday,Oh the Joy!
Just to get away Old soft flannel shirt and jeans
hair back, and face clean No mirrors, no make- up
free to be, just me
loving them and loving you
Go deeper in the woods
Go higher up the hills
The roads get rutted and rocky
city lights fade away stars abound and glow
long climb, but worth it even ifs its only for a night and a day
The meadow is where we went
seems everyone sometimes needs just to; run away
Grab the firewood, don’t forget
For gosh sakes. grab the marshmallows too
There’s no suimming pools
no hot tub or games to play
just step out, and breathe
breathe in, breathe out
just expand and the blues go away
We climbed rocks, hung from trees
floated boats or even our butts
in puddles or cold clear streams
Its not here now
but in my memory I can still clearly see
Come away, come away with me
to the Meadow
where we were so young and free.
Longing: Rocky Mt High
I know this is short, but I have had a hard time writing for the past year. This has made me feel a lot more confident. Thank you
Longing,
I’ve always longed for a romance
that brings the strongest man to his knees, with a brilliant diamond ring
placed in his trembling hand, yearning for one thing in return, my love.
I long for the strongest out of
them all, the lion who protects his lioness and his land. I want the beast that
has the biggest mane and the broadest shoulders, with nothing that could cross
his path and take what is rightfully his.
His roar echoing across his
horizon, with such a melody of confidence none dare to collide in the way of
his path. His stride smooth and collected, provoking any tinge of doubt by
those watching with the truth of his power… not something said, but something
felt… something that just was.
I want the leader of the pack,
the man that knows his own strength.
I want the lion whose roar is the
loudest in the valley, but I want to be the lioness that he couldn’t possibly
or survive without.
Though I expect the protection,
the heresy, and the crown… I hunt for that right. My body’s stride is one that
attacks to feed the heart that holds such a desire.
He could feel it persist in the back of his mind: a constant hum, a drum that sank deeper and darker into the corners of his consciousness. The beating was endless, something like a series of numbers marching its way relentlessly on to infinity. Yet, he continued to walk, even as a gentle drizzle of rain nestled itself onto the ridges of his collar, perching on the light surface of his hair. Drum… drum… drum…
Once, he had been afraid. When realizing the soft but steady beat would never cease, he lay awake at night, eyes wide and mouth dry. Could no one else hear it? Was he the only one?
He pulled his trench coat tighter about himself and shivered. He had reached the edge of the pier now and stood at its edge. The water seemed to him to writhe, wild in its yearning, trapped by some spell cast ritually in the night. For even as the waves struggled and in sweeping motions cast themselves forward, an invisible hand too quickly pulled them back.
Please, he thought. The drumming had grown louder as if to rise above the crashing sea. He fell to his knees, his head in his hands. Please…
You’ve painted such a strong picture of somebody tormented, at the very end of his tether. I love how you describe the sea – writhing and wild, and the reader wonders if this is because of his mind, or if it’s part of a real storm approaching.
Maria blew on her hands as she rubbed them together. She gazed wistfully at the people walking by
in their warm boots and fancy coats. Life
seemed to be moving in vicious circles:
she needed decent clothing to stay warm, she needed money to buy decent
clothing, she needed a job to get money and she needed decent clothing to land
a job. Who would hire her in her
tattered state?
Maria was desperate for a chance to break out of the
cycle. She regretted all the missed
opportunities, all the moves, all the trouble and upheavals of her life. She wished for a new opportunity, a chance to
get herself firmly on the path ahead.
But where was she to find it? She
wandered down the street, headed toward the library. She would peek in, see who was there today,
the dragon lady or the kooky one with the faithful dog eyes. If it was old faithful eyes, maybe she’d go
in to warm up and do some reading. She
was halfway through the D volume of the encyclopedia, after working herself
through volumes A to C. So much to
learn, so much wonder in the world. If
only she could reach out and grab a piece of it!
I touch skin, underneath the cage of bones, lies the heart. It pumps the blood that carries the oxygen, and that is life.
But inbetween the in breath and the out breath, death lurks.
Where do I go from here? I wonder sometimes. I have worked so hard, and somedays I feel I can’t get any further. So now what?
I want love. An intense love. So gripping and passionate that I lose myself. The ocean pounds, bringing back the feeling of the womb.
But the way is uphill.
Carl Jung believes what we desire in a partner is the other part of us, our subconscious, and the individuation process is bringing that part to our consciousness.
Integration, the unconscious meets the conscious. Merging the two, they kiss. The day and the night. If someone achieved that they would be content, and life would be ever changing as the unconscious.
All attempts for happiness, chocolate, cars, partners, success, are to feel this feeling, even for a moment. But all are fleeting. There is no instant heaven. And between the in breath and out breath there is the death, and we want to run, to run and run.
Hercules went through Hades facing monsters that nearly destroyed him.
Osiris had his phallus broken and lost.
The closer one get’s to this subconscious the more likely one is to go mad or even to die.
And I believe few have made the journey of a full integration and have survived.
That is what I know about longing.
Nice work Sandra.
It reads like (to me anyway) an account of longing being used as a prologue for a story of ‘requited longing’.
As it finishes with ‘That is what I know about longing.’
My desire to read more wanted it to carry on… and dive into an overwhelming passionate/intense, whirling story of a love found, experienced and the power of longing being unleashed into the ocean of love or connection.
Cheers Dawn
Thanks Dawn 🙂
A/N: This is May talking, just to be clear. MUSHY ALERT: Rated T for “passionate kissing”.
====================================================================
There’s a large clearing of grass with patches of dirt and a few daisies out by the forest here in Ayrelby. He drives me there, listening to my favorite ImagineDragons CD on the way, and then we get out and walk to opposite ends of the field, from where we have a Pokemon Battle. I use Red’s team and he uses Blue’s.
His Arcanine overpowers my Venusaur and Snorlax, but I get a foothold on him with my Blastoise’s Hydro Pump, which takes out Arcanine as well as his Rhydon, but then his Eggsecutor hits me with some Grass-Attacks and Blastoise is out, so I switch in Charizard who totals the psychic palm tree and then his Pidgeot, only to be put in its place by his Gyarydos, which also takes out my Espeon. It’s all come down to this: all I have left is Pikachu. I do a Thunderbolt onto the dragon, and it’s on the floor. He switches in Alakazam, and it uses Psychic just as I tell Pikachu to use Thunder, and after a great flash of purple and yellow light, both Pokemon are on the ground. Then Pikachu rises to its feet. I’ve won.
Then we recall our monsters and sneak into the forest, where he scoops me up into his arms and starts kissing me, over and over and over again, each kiss deeper and more passionate than the last, and I happily return his affection. Then we just lie there, under a tree, not doing anything, just lying there, and he reaches for his backpack over near us, from which he produces two cake pops, white batter coated in blue icing with miniature chocolate graham goldfish crackers stuck onto the sides to look like they’re swimming in the frosting. We eat them in unintentional synchronization. Then, with leaves piled all around us like a blanket, his arms around the crook of my back and mine around his shoulders and chest, in impeccable tranquility, and a soft wind blowing not form the east, we innocently sleep.
I have that dream a lot. Every time I wake up from it, I want to go back. Sometimes I think I would sell my soul to live in that world. When I wake up, for one brief moment, I expect him to be there, lying next to me, still shielding me from the world as he did that day we met in kindergarten. I look around my bed, half-asleep, trying to find him, but of course he isn’t there. Then I remember. I remember that I’ll never be held by him again. I remember that I am alone. That’s how I start my day.
Hey, I accidentally got logged out when I posted this. This is from May’s journal she kept in high school. She insisted that I post it.
A/N: This is a chapter for Colby Davidson’s series on Colby and May. I have permission to use these characters. Also, it takes place in the real world, not the Pokemon world. Just read the whole thing and all will be made clear.
Later
-Leaf Green, the latest author of Ayrelby
====================================================================
There’s a large clearing of grass with patches of dirt and a few daisies out by the forest here in Ayrelby. He drives me there, listening to my favorite ImagineDragons CD on the way, and then we get out and walk to opposite ends of the field, from where we have a Pokemon Battle. I use Red’s team and he uses Blue’s.
His Arcanine overpowers my Venusaur and Snorlax, but I get a foothold on him with my Blastoise’s Hydro Pump, which takes out Arcanine as well as his Rhydon, but then his Eggsecutor hits me with some Grass-Attacks and Blastoise is out, so I switch in Charizard who totals the psychic palm tree and then his Pidgeot, only to be put in its place by his Gyarydos, which also takes out my Espeon. It’s all come down to this: all I have left is Pikachu. I do a Thunderbolt onto the dragon, and it’s on the floor. He switches in Alakazam, and it uses Psychic just as I tell Pikachu to use Thunder, and after a great flash of purple and yellow light, both Pokemon are on the ground. Then Pikachu rises to its feet. I’ve won.
Then we recall our monsters and sneak into the forest, where he scoops me up into his arms and starts kissing me, over and over and over again, each kiss deeper and more passionate than the last, and I happily return his affection. Then we just lie there, under a tree, not doing anything, just lying there, and he reaches for his backpack over near us, from which he produces two cake pops, white batter coated in blue icing with miniature chocolate graham goldfish crackers stuck onto the sides to look like they’re swimming in the frosting. We eat them in unintentional synchronization. Then, with leaves piled all around us like a blanket, his arms around the crook of my back and mine around his shoulders and chest, in impeccable tranquility, and a soft wind blowing not form the east, we innocently sleep.
I have that dream a lot. Every time I wake up from it, I want to go back. Sometimes I think I would sell my soul to live in that world. When I wake up, for one brief moment, I expect him to be there, lying next to me, still shielding me from the world as he did that day we met in kindergarten. I look around my bed, half-asleep, trying to find him, but of course he isn’t there. Then I remember. I remember that I’ll never be held by him again. I remember that I am alone. That’s how I start my day.
Wow, Leaf. Thanks for the great work! It seems a bit, you know, on the mushy side at first, but that is about how I would say May would tell it. Not to be prejudice, but she is a teenage girl in the story. The only thing I would change would be to elaborate a bit more, I guess, like, dreamily, in the dream? Maybe? I don’t know. I really appreciate your help, Leaf, mucho gracias. Keep writing!
Sincerely yours,
C. Davidson, an author of Ayrelby.
Thanks for letting me help you on this Colby. I had fun!
-Leaf
I look forward to collaborating with you more in the future, Leaf Green. Thanks again for your help.
-Colby
Her sun kissed shoulder peeked out from her knit sweater, the one she swears has luck stitched into every inch.
“Did you know cows have four stomachs?” She blurts out, half mindedly.
“No, but I am sure that knowledge will come in handy one day” I tease back.
She lifts herself up from the paspan her mother gave her, smiling. Her grey-green eyes have been honored with crow’s feet because of that smile. Sock feet, she slides side to side, as if skating, into the other room.
Here I sit, longing.
Marvin longed to make £1m so much that during every conversation
in the pub for over a year he’d brought up Marc Zuckerberg. His mates had initially
been annoyed by this tendency but it eventually just became funny. He wouldn’t
make Zuckerburg the focus of each conversation in a biographical or ‘steering’
way, but Zuckerburg would inexorably be introduced in some format.
“This is the problem, you buy these wavey garms from charity
shops but in reality they’re £4 for a reason: they’re actually not that good.
These garms are seemingly worth the
money but actually all you’re doing is burning
money. It would be better to buy the Big Issue from the person outside – at
least that’s somewhat sustainable. All I’m doing currently is condemning these
garms to five years on a dusty coat rail. I’m sentencing them to a massive
fucking years-long wait in the dark that will invariably end with my brother
taking them and spraying ketamine all over their lapels at Boomtown,” said
Fred.
“Yeah man, that’s so true! Literally, the amount of times I’ve
gone into fucking Marie Curie on the Keynsham High Street and convinced myself
that it ‘would be rude not to’. It’s not a matter of fucking rudeness, haha! So
stupid. To be fair, you can find some absolute gems in charity shops, you just
have to keep looking. I’m sure there are probably people out there who make a
living by just nailing charity jobs when there’s new stock in and getting the
retro expensive shit. You could make a decent little business out of that, you
know, especially now ASOS Marketplace do menswear. Online’s the future of
garm-trading, realistically. You just need a decent creative eye and a talent
for programming and you could set up a quality little online vintage outlet.
Marc Zuckerburg, who founded Facebook, started similarly. He built an online
empire from nothing. And now look at him – he’s a millionare,” said Marvin.
English isn’t my mother tongue, so please be understanding when reading this…
______________________________
I long to feel alright.
I long to have someone to talk to. I’m breathing, but I’m not living. All around me,
there are people, sitting with me, walking by, talking to me. But, I just can’t
listen. I don’t see them. I’m not there at all.
My mind goes back to the times when I felt excited about my life. When I wanted to know
the whole word. When I wanted to do everything and when I believed anything was
possible.
I long to meet that person again. The one that trusted herself. The one that didn’t gave
up.
I long to be her again. Being optimistic. Being self-confident. Being happy.
How is itthat I forgot that person? Why is it that I lost myself, my beliefs?
And how canI go back? Back to being myself, back to living my life.
I long for clarity. ‘Cause the road I’m taking is all-dark. It’s twisted and it’s
treacherous. And it’s scary.
I long to find my way again.
But maybe, that’s what life is all about. Losing yourself, just to found it again.
And maybe in that way, we learn. About our mistakes, our dreams, our hopes, our fears,
our nightmares.
We get to know ourselves.
And maybe, we change. For the better. We strengthen our weaknesses. Or maybe we don’t. And life goes on.
How is it that we know if it was all worth it? Maybe we never will.
But, should this be the road I have to travel to get to know who I am, then I guess it’s
all right.
At the end, when I finally understand why it all turned out the way it did. I’ll make peace
with it. And I’ll be alright.
And maybe even, if I’m lucky, my longings will be settled at last.
this is really beautiful.
I really love this. I feel I can relate so much it’s a bit frightening. You said English is not your native language? You write better than many native speakers I have encountered. It’s really pretty…even in its solemnity.
Your voice is deep, rich, honey-colored. I long for the
days, slow and languid, when we would sit on the front porch and listen to the
cicadas. Their steady thrum in the acacia trees made me feel like summer. Heat.
A burning flame lit that steadily trembles and flickers but does not go out. The
scent of oleander drifts onto the porch, sweet with poison and the thrill of
death. You take my hand. “Someday,” I whisper, “We will have an endless
tomorrow.”
I long for cold winter nights when you would sacrifice your
jumper just to keep me warm. I yearn for your compassion as it was the calm
before the storm. I crave your tender caress as it released would my stress. I
want to go back to the times I would lay upon your chest, cherishing the sound
of all your small breaths. I enjoyed your rumbling laughter and the need to
make me smile. I still ache for your gentle touch even though it’s been a
while.
I long for your kindness as his is swaying. I yearn for your
warmth as I am relaying. I crave your soft touch as I am bruised and raw. I
want to run away from the heart that beats only to course me war. I enjoyed the
beginning but life isn’t a game. I still ache from the last blow it happened
again and again.
I long for the nights you didn’t drink and be vile. I yearn
for the compassion I haven’t seen in a while. I used to crave the sound of your beating
chest, but now it’s time to be laid to rest. I didn’t enjoy our ending it sure wasn’t
fun, I will admit I was surprised when you reached for your gun.
Longing
I long for the talks that we had
about the day. I long for the way that you listened to me without ridicule in
your voice or the smile on your face. You were the one that listened to every
word that came out of my mind or mouth and then clung on for more. The one that
made me wonder how the world could be so cruel. You were my shelter, the one
that I hid behind when the world got tough. Although I wanted my problems to
disappear, you didn’t stop there. You encouraged me to keep going and to do
things for myself. I long for those days again, when I was just an energetic
little girl and you were the role model that I admired ever since I was born;
but a longing is just that. Unattainable and hard to reach. I should have
appreciated you more, because now you’re gone and you can’t come back to talk
to me. My longing will not be fulfilled and therefore I will always long for
you. Even when it’s irrational for me to.
i made up my own prompt.
Pain.
As he took his anger out on me, as he treated me like i didn’t matter, how he ignores me when i greet him coming home from school “hey dad”.
I always wonder, why me? God why me? Why am i so out of place. Here he is again, back into my life and he has a new family. His kids are probably one hundred times more beautiful than me. Sometimes i forget how many there are because of all the chaotic yelling and laughing. I wonder what they’re laughing at. me? i wouldn’t disagree with them though, because even i don’t know what i look like.
But there was one. there was always one. I called her sammy. I know she was still young but i knew that she was the one who would always look after me. hold my hand when we were crossing roads. hug me when its storming. and say “i love you” at the end of each day.
I placed my purple diamond-tee silver ring into one of the wooden drawers from the small jewellery box i gave her. I hope when she grows up she will remember me. But not for this. Not for leaving her.
I hope she is happy. She deserves to be. I know i never left a note. I know i didn’t get to say goodbye. I know she heard all the yelling from downstairs. But i need her to know i did this for myself. She will think of me as selfish. But at this state, i had to be.
i couldn’t take this anymore,
years and years
of pain.
The sidewalks are yellow dead red and it’s too warm for mid-November. I don’t know how to not feel like the only person in the city. I buy a coffee and fall a bit for the barista with the glasses and I walk across the street and melt for the boy with the scarf. It’s almost like every part of me wants out. I stick to the world like the tracks of a snail. It’s all very embarrassing and weird how much everything matters to me. I get back to my place. Barren except for a sofa bed, leftover take-out, and my laptop. I sit cross-legged in my nest and scroll through my phone intending to call my sister or a friend but we can’t talk the way we used to sharing cider in the park. I travel the stars alone.
even though we are through, I cant stop my heart from longing for you. The last goodbye has been said and the last fight won. But the memories of our haunted past had just begun.
Driving down the street, I see a familiar place as my mind travels down the deep dark roads of memories lane, where my heart will always belong to you. In the memories of yesterday I see our broken faded tomorrows and I think back to the time I was young and in love. Whne I felt safe and secure in your arms not knowing that you were the only one I needed to be protected from. Like a thief in the night you stole my heart. In you I could never find fault.
But now that its over I wont dwell on the past. Living with regrets makes it hard to say goodbye and longing for your touch is the reason tears flow from my eyes.
I remember the sound of water lapping against the insulation filled docks…the bright blue and orange hues of dead crayfish claws strewn across the wooden boards which gave off a slightly pungent, fishy smell. I sat at the edge of the dock with my feet and ankles spinning in opposition like egg beaters, waiting for grandma to sit down in her chair to watch my sister, brother and I swim.
I dove in head first and felt the cool water envelop and engulf my entire body. I felt cleansed, refreshed, like life was nothing but a dream. I held my diaphragm contracted, my eyes tightly shut, as I spiraled as far down toward the bottom of the lake as I could. I knew the sensation inside my lungs, which indicated I didn’t have much time left, so well that I trusted I could open my eyes and search for treasures at the bottom without fear….
but that was so long ago…
I longed for those peaceful times by the lake where life was held in a timeless web of intricate and delicate moments.
I completely identify with what you are saying. Very powerful and moving.
LONGING
I saw your face today. As always. In the morning, when
I woke. In the afternoon, when I stopped. And in the evening, when the feeling of
inertia and being lost took a hold of me again so strong that I couldn’t shake
it without a drink.
I lied.
I didn’t see your face. I felt your face. I felt your smell. Your touch. The static
happiness that danced between our fingers.
I fought it.
It was futile.
It was all a fucking lie. A woman a world away , 11000 km of radio silence to be exact, living a different life that I would never be part of. Because you’d never let me.
Yet.
I lied to your face.
When I sent that final email and ended it with “The
End’. I’m lying still and I don’t know if I can get up anymore to face anymore of this.
You’re gone but you still haven’t left me. And you won’t, if I can make an educated guess, for another year or so.
And then, I will lose your face.
I have always had this feeling deep inside me that I can never explain. A type of longing. And no matter how I tried I could never figure it out. It’s a certain tingling in the top of the head that makes you feel restless. Longing. But what is it? I have always wanted something and maybe this could be it. I don’t want to be real. I don’t want to live a terminal life where every morning I have to face the fact of mortality. To face the end. What happens, if anything? Please I don’t want it to be real. I don’t want to be real. I want to be a for ever played movie that can never end. I want to stop having those moments where I wake up and feel real. Please make it stop. Oh please just make it stop.
Beautiful here’s mine,
What I long for? I long for peace. I was born in the 90’s, a quiet, shy and kind girl. I walk into a room full of strangers, immediately uncomfortable because of my introvert ways and loud thoughts. Carefully, thinking of others before I said a word. I didn’t notice reality of drama and pain until I went to Jr. High school, with a bunch of fakes who I didn’t speak to. I didn’t associate with much because of the deadly world that was going on around me. Too much noise, but I looked and longed for the real person who also knew peace. I longed for peace so much that I heard from God above who says, ” Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”-Matthew 5:9. The thought and life of Jesus Christ has brought me peace and who I continuously long for.
I could sum it up for you, but I fear that if I did, you wouldn’t see it from my side.
He’s always there, lingering next to me, and yet I can see how he’s looking at her from across the room. He laughs and jokes around with me, and I see how we could be happy together. But when I look back on the moment, tiny details linger in my mind, and it’s clearer than ever that he’s infatuated with her.
Every single time, he pulls me in, but then I realize that he’s doing it for her.
He’s my friend, and I’m in love with him. But he’ll never see me that way. Because she’s all he needs. And I’ll never be good enough.
But I’m ok with that. As long as I’m watching on the sidelines, I’ll be fine.
The story became darker than I had intended, but here it is…
He held the rock in his fingertips, as if recalling in its touch her presence, yet set it down quickly, wandering off in search of some other aspect to fulfill his insatiable desire. In every sentiment he saw her; in every sensation was a reminder of her absence; with each attempt at happiness, he only recalled how happy he had been with her, and that, without her, happiness as such was nearly impossible. However, he was not grave: he did not identify his longing to others, and did not become wroth or irritable, as oftentimes happens in similar situations: instead, he only adapted a melancholy personality, becoming increasingly quiet as the day progressed and obviously entertained by many thoughts, all of the same design.
Outside the air was chill, made so by passing spring breezes, yet immediately warmed when the breezes stopped, as if they and the sun traded occupations of the world. He walked along the pathways outside of his house, brushing his feet on the stones, watching them or the scenery, hardly noticing either and ensnared in a frequent, thoughtless, emotional rumination. How he desired for her to be there! Everything he did, he wished he could do with her, and everything he was without he desired her consolation in – and her! She need console him of herself, yet he did not dare mention it to her – what would he say? He could not relate the subject without it sounding as blame: for the issue was not desolate, and yet it was not remediable – for the issue was not a true factor, but rather a product of him remembering something greater; and he desired greatness in his time. Everything of him commanded her, and yet, as if his words were naught, he could speak – truly speak – and she would not hear: such was distance.
He felt anxious and wrote her letters, to which she replied, and he wrote more in response to her replies: yet he still found no mollification. It would have been much better, he thought, if she treated him poorly; perhaps, if being so distant, their relationship was dismantled, and fell in ultimate ruin, it all would be easier: for it was her kindness he received, and by being capable only of receiving it in immaterial ways, it was antagonizing; for the more amiable she became, the more he seemed to desire her presence.
And it did not help that he was attracted to her. She was a fine young woman, and seemed more beautiful by the day – and he could not touch her! he could not hear her! he could not, simply, see her on appeal; and when he did see her it was in photographs, which did not move and had little of the life he knew she actually possessed.
The man threw the book on the ground, furious at how it had ended, and hardly remembering the story, or even indeed if the ending had been very irrelevant at all. He developed an indissoluble stupor, growing more anxious by the day and calmly writing to her, laughing when he read her letters yet missing the satisfaction he knew he should be receiving. He tried addressing her of the issue, telling her how painfully he missed her; and when she did not reply he grew angry, silently cursing her and sputtering maledictions to himself when he was alone.
He did not neglect his studies, however, and continued to prize his work. In fact, he began taking greater pride in his accomplishments, boasting in ways he had hitherto thought pompous and viewing others as contemptible, for no reason but his supposed superiority in achievement. He kept his agony hidden, and interacted with others as cleanly as he could, gaining their appreciation for what he knew to be a factitious attitude. He began telling her more frequently how he missed her, and he grew vexed when she replied that she missed him as well, considering her affection to be a scheme of sorts, and to be underlined, not with honesty, but with the intention of deception.
He rubbed his hands, attempting to remove a stain from his face, and washed his face, the stain implacable, his fingers too long and groping on his skin, his eyes beneath his skin like emeralds; dark gems misplaced and unlit, tainted and hardly recognizable as the mineral that they were.
He hugged her when they met, smiling and laughing at a joke that she made. He placed his arm on her and spoke to her calmly of many things, observing her and incapable of deciphering the emotion in her eyes.
I long for a sense of completeness. I long to wake up each morning with excitement for the day. I long for joy regardless of circumstances; a state of contentment. I long to ben accepted for who I am. I long to be loved.
I sometimes get these feelings. These monster like urges, feining for an opportunity to see her face again. Minutes felt like hours, hours like days, and days were like decades, waiting for our chance to sneak away. Waiting for our chance to devour each other and partake in a very disgraceful sin.
I longed for your presence.
I long for the mountains, the rolling foothills of the Appalachians. I miss the fresh, crisp morning air I inhaled as I walked around the lake and gazed at the puffs of mist rising from the trees toward the heavens. Strolling along the paths and roads, I would stare at the community I created, the partners I brought with me, the souls that we transformed together. The lake, the hills, the cabins, the people – they were my legacy, my last real success.
It is a decade since I left my life’s work in the mountains. Those days were filled with satisfaction, my cup ran over with joy, I was smiled upon by the warmth of the Divine Countenance. Like Abraham in Haran, I helped create souls. They were sent as rough diamonds. My job was to find the right people to polish them, the right activities to trigger their creativity, the right natural settings to nurture their souls, away from the hubbub of the city.
I long for the days when I felt successful, when I made a difference.
Since that last summer day in 2007, the sun has gone dark, the joy of work has disappeared like the mist that rises from the mountains. I miss the fulfillment. The cup that used to run over has tarnished, darkness creeping over the once brilliant silver. I have looked in other corners of the world to find that feeling, to discover new interests, new passions, new successes.
I long for the laughter of those days, sitting on the back porch of my mountain home, surrounded by good people, those I inspired and those by whom I was inspired; the smell of the barbecue wafting over us as we talked about the future of the kids with whom we were entrusted, as we dreamed of a future as vibrant as the colors of the Appalachians in autumn.
Most of all, though, I long for a warm embrace, for warm eyes…
For warmth.
We have a different word for longing Where I Come From. Like any word and any language, it is not the same as its translations. It is not the same even to the People Back Home. Like all words, it is different every time it is spoken, uttered, screamed, cried, sobbed, whispered, whimpered, shouted, prayed, cursed and spat.
But it is so different from longing. Our word hurts the heart, like missing and homesick(ness), but is also good, it tastes like home, those thing you only ever eat When You Go Back. It feels like a memory but also like expectation. It is the feeling of when you are about to meet your best childhood friend, but also the feeling when you hug them and it’s been ages, and it is the feeling, when you are parting ways, that crazy urge you have, to just say don’t go, let’s go somewhere else, don’t let it end yet.
I long for tears.
I long to feel the burning sting of the salt upon my cheeks. I long to no longer force emotions down my throat.
I long to wash the wary listlessness from eyes. To see them again, the sparkling Arctic blue they once were, instead of the cold steel gray they have become.
I long to unburden my heart from relentless pressure. I long to liberate my soul.
I long to to feel like someone else. Someone more like…myself.
I long for forests of emerald trees, waving to the sapphire sky above. I long for the call of a seagull, calling me home to the ocean. I long for a place to call my home, where I actually feel like I belong. I long for the day when my boyfriend and I can finally get married. I long for nighttime, for the softly glowing moon and the gentle beams of soft silver light it casts down onto the ground, creating velvety shadows of all entities around. I long for freedom, for the wings I lost. I long for my mother and father, my sister and brother, my daughter and adoptive daughter. I long for all the people I lost to tragedy that I could not prevent. I long for the feeling of not being held down on the ground by an unseen force, the time when I can finally lift off on black wings and fly to where I feel I belong. I long for crisp apples and crunchy leaves underfoot as Autumn falls down on my town. I long for the feeling of being whole, something I haven’t felt in years. I long for peace, for an end to the constant fighting in my head. I long for the battle waged inside my heart to end, to give me rest from all that I struggle with. I long for a comfortable bed with soft pillows and downy blankets (I’m really tired right now). I long for my old cat, Peabody, to come back to life. I long for the sun to die. I long for darkness. I long for the shadows I know as my friends to come back and drive the day away. I long for freedom in the night breeze, for soaring above the world. I long for feeling like I’m the way I should be. I long for finally being in a body I can change to how I feel comfortable. But most of all, I long for and miss my family.
I long to have ambition and to have the strength to feel the overwhelming urge to run and chase after what I want. I long to not be ambitionless and afraid; cowering in the corner like a scared dog. I take a small step forward then always get pushed back by any minor setback. I long to have goals and plans, to be able to think about my future and not feel hopeless and tired. To know where I’m going and what I want to be. I long to not wake up every day to a regular routine and never going after new things.
I long for inspiration and spontaneous ideas, I long for purpose and desires. I long to be able to push through what I’m doing and being able to finish without crying out in frustration, yanking at my hair and giving up so easily. I long for the feeling of accomplishment and feeling proud of dreams. I long to have an impact on anyone or anything and not feeling like I’ve done nothing meaningful in this measly life.
I merely long for the determination and drive that pushes someone towards something good and successful in life. I long to not feel the self-loathing and irritation as I realize that everyone around me has an ambition and talent that they’re working on or racing towards while I’m left in the dust. Standing here with nothing to hold onto and nothing to keep me going.
I try to keep up but I always end up falling down and self-sabotaging myself.
I long for the need to pursue and explore the little skills and talents I possess for a possible career and future. It’s an out of body experience as I’m standing there yelling and kicking at myself to get up and do something in life yet I never listen. I’m stuck in my own mind, so terrified to step out into reality and face the consequences and obstacles.
I long to not live by the toxic motto that it’s safer and easier to not pursue and that it’s better to stay where I’m at and not venture out further.
I long to be able to grasp at the small spark that grows within me and not let it slip through my fingers and die back down then feeling so angry at myself for letting it fall and break away so easily again. I long to tell myself that next time I’ll get it right yet when the time comes around I make the same mistake over and over.
I long for the sound of clapping, cheerful voices and prideful, happy stares as they congratulate me and not the sound of lectures and disappointed tones as I hear the same thing over and over again.
The displeased looks of peers as they wonder where I’m going in life, yet I wonder the same thing.
I long to not hear saddening and barren tones playing like a broken record. I long to not see the disappointing shaking of heads and eyes staring at me like I’m crazy.
I long to not feel discouraged and upset thinking about all the things I haven’t accomplished. I long for easy and bright days, happy mornings and a clear mind. I long to be able to make a difference. I long for everything to not feel so uninteresting and scrambled. I long to not feel like everything’s going downhill and time seems to be stuck in place and not moving forward.
I long to be something other than ambitionless, cowardly and goalless. I long to not give up so easily and to race to the finish line without stopping so often and eventually never getting there.
I’m lying on the ground staring helplessly at the finish line and it seems so far away in the distance then sometimes the line is right there yet I never make it. I long to not feel overwhelmed when things get too complicated and hard.
I long to not feel so self-destructive; helpless and hopeless with everything and everyone.
I long to have something to believe in; I long for someone to believe in me.
Most importantly; I long to believe in myself. But that faith died out long ago.