ElizabethofYork
Old Crone
I just googled it.
Drabblewrimo 2022
- Thread starter sojourner
- Start date
Yu_Gi_Oh
天天好心情
Abolish:
She found, to her disgust, that violence brushes too cozily against cliché; there’s no texture in the telling, no resonance in the words one can select in order to represent one’s body hurled against a wall, or an iron raised in threat. It’s chalky. Brittle. It snaps before it can be woven. It’s numb.
She said, let my pain be found in my screams of heartbreak at the edge of the ocean. Make it loud, foolish, sensational. Let me crash due to my own reckless craving for abundance. Let me weep because I scrape myself up from my own catastrophes.
Fetching:
When deciding whether one wishes to look fetching or fuckable, understand this particular aesthetic allows one to perhaps politely engage the eyes only – a sanitary way to draw the gaze with none of the consequences of losing your black and gold underwear down the side of a man’s bed, and then, weeks later, when he still hasn’t found them, despite having claimed to have cleaned his apartment several times since, collaborating with him to pull the frame from the wall and jamming your wrist into the gap roughly enough that you come away with a graze and a small bruise.
She found, to her disgust, that violence brushes too cozily against cliché; there’s no texture in the telling, no resonance in the words one can select in order to represent one’s body hurled against a wall, or an iron raised in threat. It’s chalky. Brittle. It snaps before it can be woven. It’s numb.
She said, let my pain be found in my screams of heartbreak at the edge of the ocean. Make it loud, foolish, sensational. Let me crash due to my own reckless craving for abundance. Let me weep because I scrape myself up from my own catastrophes.
Fetching:
When deciding whether one wishes to look fetching or fuckable, understand this particular aesthetic allows one to perhaps politely engage the eyes only – a sanitary way to draw the gaze with none of the consequences of losing your black and gold underwear down the side of a man’s bed, and then, weeks later, when he still hasn’t found them, despite having claimed to have cleaned his apartment several times since, collaborating with him to pull the frame from the wall and jamming your wrist into the gap roughly enough that you come away with a graze and a small bruise.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
FIELD
'If I wanted subjectivity I'd have been a psychologist, or some other kind of fraud.'
'But that itself is a subjective position isn't it? Fundamentals: what is the evidence of your senses?'
'When I stand next to this machine I feel wrong.'
'And you know that, unprimed, it's just a very large electromagnet.'
'I built it.'
'We built it.'
'And electromagnets are harmless.'
'But is that the evidence of your senses? Or is it a paradigm you subjectively choose to defend?'
'It is a well-supported paradigm.'
'So far. It’s only ever ‘so far’. Alternative theory?'
'Maybe god just hates it.'
'If I wanted subjectivity I'd have been a psychologist, or some other kind of fraud.'
'But that itself is a subjective position isn't it? Fundamentals: what is the evidence of your senses?'
'When I stand next to this machine I feel wrong.'
'And you know that, unprimed, it's just a very large electromagnet.'
'I built it.'
'We built it.'
'And electromagnets are harmless.'
'But is that the evidence of your senses? Or is it a paradigm you subjectively choose to defend?'
'It is a well-supported paradigm.'
'So far. It’s only ever ‘so far’. Alternative theory?'
'Maybe god just hates it.'
Clair De Lune
Apocalypse cocktails
Square
She's just a little uptight. A hard nut to crack, I thought.
Her high, nasal squawks and rapid hyena grimace triggers an anxious repulsion in me. I can feel the smile fall off her face as I leave.
I must humanise her. Picture her with a happy dog perhaps.
She's standing, tight lipped, jerkily patting it's head. Not a dog person …or a cat person, I feel.
Imagine her tenderly breast feeding a baby.
I can't.
I wonder if she's ever smoked a joint or snuck in late with a love bite.
Nobody's all shell and no nut, surely?
She's just a little uptight. A hard nut to crack, I thought.
Her high, nasal squawks and rapid hyena grimace triggers an anxious repulsion in me. I can feel the smile fall off her face as I leave.
I must humanise her. Picture her with a happy dog perhaps.
She's standing, tight lipped, jerkily patting it's head. Not a dog person …or a cat person, I feel.
Imagine her tenderly breast feeding a baby.
I can't.
I wonder if she's ever smoked a joint or snuck in late with a love bite.
Nobody's all shell and no nut, surely?
UNRELIABLE
On the anniversary of her grandad’s death, Paula woke to a strange scene. Her bright floral bedroom was black and white. She jumped up, looked in the mirror. SHE was black and white. Panicking, she bounded downstairs. Her ginger tomcat? The Klee painting? Black and white.
Staring in disbelief from the kitchen window, all she could see were black and white fields. Where’s the housing estate? The wind turbines? Where is the COLOUR?
She checked the date, frowning. 1954?! Just then, her grandad walked into the kitchen. Paula disappeared in a puff of smoke.
I’m not making this up, honest.
On the anniversary of her grandad’s death, Paula woke to a strange scene. Her bright floral bedroom was black and white. She jumped up, looked in the mirror. SHE was black and white. Panicking, she bounded downstairs. Her ginger tomcat? The Klee painting? Black and white.
Staring in disbelief from the kitchen window, all she could see were black and white fields. Where’s the housing estate? The wind turbines? Where is the COLOUR?
She checked the date, frowning. 1954?! Just then, her grandad walked into the kitchen. Paula disappeared in a puff of smoke.
I’m not making this up, honest.
Yu_Gi_Oh
天天好心情
Like a total copycat, I wrote Square because Clair De Lune wrote it today, but now I look at the list I see I planned to write Unreliable today. Jfc, etc.
Square
You imagine a mandala as an unbroken circle, radiating petals; it’s a layered ornate sunburst, wheeling from the center. This is the mandala you see. It’s Instagram. That girl’s tattoo, or that huge cushion slung next to her sofa. Oh, you know it? It’s pretty, right? God, they’re so neat.
But this first line here, it stops, or it pauses, and it falls. This line drops, and when it does, it makes a knife-edge. You can cut yourself on my mandala, and on the line that doubles back too; it’s sharp, and slices one more time before it heads up.
Square
You imagine a mandala as an unbroken circle, radiating petals; it’s a layered ornate sunburst, wheeling from the center. This is the mandala you see. It’s Instagram. That girl’s tattoo, or that huge cushion slung next to her sofa. Oh, you know it? It’s pretty, right? God, they’re so neat.
But this first line here, it stops, or it pauses, and it falls. This line drops, and when it does, it makes a knife-edge. You can cut yourself on my mandala, and on the line that doubles back too; it’s sharp, and slices one more time before it heads up.
Yu_Gi_Oh
天天好心情
Unreliable:
Maybe the grief of those first few weeks stopped her remembering, or perhaps the pain filtered through the glaze of memory is still so sharp that there’s a circuit-breaker blocking recollection, so, she can’t say for sure, but she guesses she kept cycling during that time.
The riding, reckless, one-handed, bike carried down stone stairs and once, into a closed park when night had fallen, became affirmation of continuity. Look at me now, honey! I’m illegally gliding next to the ocean! Even in darkness, I’m fine!
Or, I am crying in a hedge with the bike on top of me.
Maybe the grief of those first few weeks stopped her remembering, or perhaps the pain filtered through the glaze of memory is still so sharp that there’s a circuit-breaker blocking recollection, so, she can’t say for sure, but she guesses she kept cycling during that time.
The riding, reckless, one-handed, bike carried down stone stairs and once, into a closed park when night had fallen, became affirmation of continuity. Look at me now, honey! I’m illegally gliding next to the ocean! Even in darkness, I’m fine!
Or, I am crying in a hedge with the bike on top of me.
prunus
Tick tock.
Yu_Gi_Oh I absolutely love your writing, I don't know how to describe why, it's something, maybe, the amalgam of intricacy and concision and beauty, all compressed under great pressure into something like an uncut diamond - small and apparently innocuous but containing within infinite complexity. Very unlike that sentence in fact! 
Do you write professionally?
Do you write professionally?
story
Changing the facts
This happened last night.
So I wrote it and now trying to fit one of the title words round it.
Reckless…? Pride…?
Victoria line, 8:30, a man takes coke off the back of his folded newspaper, grimacing, snorting.
“Really?!” I feel a sneer. Also pity, that it’s come to this.
He, waving, or drowning, says he’s tired, travelling from work to collect his child.
I raise my palm “Not interested, don’t care. Do what you must, but this looks really fucking messy.”
He tries again with words and gestures.
I look away, back. “Mate, I’m in your gang, but seriously, have a word…”
He looks down, up again. “Yeah… fair…” he says.
Thank god my stop is next.
His story scares me.
So I wrote it and now trying to fit one of the title words round it.
Reckless…? Pride…?
Victoria line, 8:30, a man takes coke off the back of his folded newspaper, grimacing, snorting.
“Really?!” I feel a sneer. Also pity, that it’s come to this.
He, waving, or drowning, says he’s tired, travelling from work to collect his child.
I raise my palm “Not interested, don’t care. Do what you must, but this looks really fucking messy.”
He tries again with words and gestures.
I look away, back. “Mate, I’m in your gang, but seriously, have a word…”
He looks down, up again. “Yeah… fair…” he says.
Thank god my stop is next.
His story scares me.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Wait, so are you meant to do one a day or what? Well I wrote this one yesterday but forgot to post it.
MELLIFLUOUS
Echolalia. A word I first learned aged 30, but a part of my life since always. Copying word sounds until the meaning falls away.
Sometimes they loop for months at a time, mostly in my head but out loud whenever (I think) I'm alone. Word of the week must be spoken aloud, in the stupidest possible voice, at the first opportunity. Why? Fuck knows. Just bad wiring. There's probably a plus side to it.
Ideally it'll be a word I never need to use, or one I don't even know the meaning of. No meaning there to lose. Like 'mellifluous'.
MELLIFLUOUS
Echolalia. A word I first learned aged 30, but a part of my life since always. Copying word sounds until the meaning falls away.
Sometimes they loop for months at a time, mostly in my head but out loud whenever (I think) I'm alone. Word of the week must be spoken aloud, in the stupidest possible voice, at the first opportunity. Why? Fuck knows. Just bad wiring. There's probably a plus side to it.
Ideally it'll be a word I never need to use, or one I don't even know the meaning of. No meaning there to lose. Like 'mellifluous'.
Clair De Lune
Apocalypse cocktails
I was thinking the other day how there are ghosts in my head because I still repeat certain words in a way that people I no longer know used to say them. Sometimes it hurts too.
Yu_Gi_Oh
天天好心情
Yu_Gi_Oh I absolutely love your writing, I don't know how to describe why, it's something, maybe, the amalgam of intricacy and concision and beauty, all compressed under great pressure into something like an uncut diamond - small and apparently innocuous but containing within infinite complexity. Very unlike that sentence in fact!
Thank you so much. I am not an experienced creative writer at all, so it's lovely to have any positive feedback. I don't write professionally but I am a teacher of courses like AP Language and Composition, or the US college-level equivalents like Composition and Rhetoric, so writing is a big part of my life, albeit in a much less sexy way than this.
This, by the way, is perfect to me. It makes me want to cry. Every sentence is doing something huge. Amazing.
Clair De Lune
Apocalypse cocktails
Entropy
Who knows when the clocks will stop ticking, when the paint will begin curling, when the dust will become blankets for the dead.
Abandoned houses, life inanimate, temporal - ordinary. Decay, mold and sepia snapshots of forgotten souls. Pianos warped into tuneless macabre smiles.
Ivy prying through cracked glass, reaching blindly toward the swollen, mildew laced wallpaper.
Dishes piled up in the sink, love letters strewn across the sodden carpet. Damp lined paper, ink blurring lines into paragraphs. Soon to be illegible, silent syllables lick their lips one last time.
What you call a living room, is a liminal space.
Who knows when the clocks will stop ticking, when the paint will begin curling, when the dust will become blankets for the dead.
Abandoned houses, life inanimate, temporal - ordinary. Decay, mold and sepia snapshots of forgotten souls. Pianos warped into tuneless macabre smiles.
Ivy prying through cracked glass, reaching blindly toward the swollen, mildew laced wallpaper.
Dishes piled up in the sink, love letters strewn across the sodden carpet. Damp lined paper, ink blurring lines into paragraphs. Soon to be illegible, silent syllables lick their lips one last time.
What you call a living room, is a liminal space.
Last edited:
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
Weakness
The weakness wasn’t the first symptom. Tingling fingers and painful tendons had already shown up in random joints, but when your hands can’t turn a key in a lock, or tear open a dishwasher tab, it’s time to get help.
“Can’t put symptoms together into a diagnosis. Patient sent home.” was the terse entry in the medical notes.
My immune system continued attacking my nerves. Untreated for six months, everything got worse and the damage, by the time I was admitted to the neurological ward, was permanent.
“Patient sent home.” An easy thing to write. A symptom of systemic weakness.
The weakness wasn’t the first symptom. Tingling fingers and painful tendons had already shown up in random joints, but when your hands can’t turn a key in a lock, or tear open a dishwasher tab, it’s time to get help.
“Can’t put symptoms together into a diagnosis. Patient sent home.” was the terse entry in the medical notes.
My immune system continued attacking my nerves. Untreated for six months, everything got worse and the damage, by the time I was admitted to the neurological ward, was permanent.
“Patient sent home.” An easy thing to write. A symptom of systemic weakness.
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
"Liked" for the writing, not the experience of course..
WEAKNESS
The article said ‘Framing your weaknesses positively is challenging, but combining self-awareness with an action plan stands you apart from other candidates’.
So she replied “My greatest weakness is that I find it impossible to finish…”
She held up 3 fingers, tapped them against her upper arm, then tugged her tongue. Nodded at them with bright eyes.
The interview panel looked at each other uncertainly.
She drew vertical lines in the air and held onto them, sobbing.
An awkward silence.
Frustrated, she put an imaginary noose around her neck, pulled it, fell to the floor.
Nada.
“FUCKING SENTENCES, YOU THICK…!”
The article said ‘Framing your weaknesses positively is challenging, but combining self-awareness with an action plan stands you apart from other candidates’.
So she replied “My greatest weakness is that I find it impossible to finish…”
She held up 3 fingers, tapped them against her upper arm, then tugged her tongue. Nodded at them with bright eyes.
The interview panel looked at each other uncertainly.
She drew vertical lines in the air and held onto them, sobbing.
An awkward silence.
Frustrated, she put an imaginary noose around her neck, pulled it, fell to the floor.
Nada.
“FUCKING SENTENCES, YOU THICK…!”
Yeh! I posted the full list of daily prompts in the OP
Ooof! Smashing drabble! Silent syllables lick their lips. Liminal space. Love it mate
I'm a bit obsessed with the notion of the liminal anyway, so this is right up my street.This.
Yu_Gi_Oh
天天好心情
Weakness:
The Artist makes ceramic tea pots, but he drinks coffee. He makes ornate espresso mugs and a soap dish for his new apartment. He made an ashtray and then quit smoking before he’d fired it in the kiln. I ask once, drunk, why it’s art. Insistent, I say, are you sure it isn’t craft?
He makes a video for a competition so saturated with cliché that I look out of the window of the taxi and try not to cry.
“I just don’t see”, I say, “how it’s art if you’re not doing anything new”.
And he says, “It’s not”.
The Artist makes ceramic tea pots, but he drinks coffee. He makes ornate espresso mugs and a soap dish for his new apartment. He made an ashtray and then quit smoking before he’d fired it in the kiln. I ask once, drunk, why it’s art. Insistent, I say, are you sure it isn’t craft?
He makes a video for a competition so saturated with cliché that I look out of the window of the taxi and try not to cry.
“I just don’t see”, I say, “how it’s art if you’re not doing anything new”.
And he says, “It’s not”.
May Kasahara
take me to the feeling
UNRELIABLE
Running. Why am I running? Someone ate my heart. A pig ate it? Maybe I'm the pig.
Branches catch in my black hair, draw red lines on my white skin. This at least makes sense.
Running from a spinning wheel. Yes. No! Stepmother. Because she…fancies me? Because I ate her apple?
Oh look, a house! Cute little door. Think I'm supposed to eat porridge and sleep in a bed. Sounds good. But there's seven beds here, no porridge…which one is it, ffs?
Axe in the corner. Axe is for chopping. This at least makes sense. Pick it up and wait.
Running. Why am I running? Someone ate my heart. A pig ate it? Maybe I'm the pig.
Branches catch in my black hair, draw red lines on my white skin. This at least makes sense.
Running from a spinning wheel. Yes. No! Stepmother. Because she…fancies me? Because I ate her apple?
Oh look, a house! Cute little door. Think I'm supposed to eat porridge and sleep in a bed. Sounds good. But there's seven beds here, no porridge…which one is it, ffs?
Axe in the corner. Axe is for chopping. This at least makes sense. Pick it up and wait.
Clair De Lune
Apocalypse cocktails
Aww fanks...I was obsessively editing it for so long that I put myself in a really sombre moodOoof! Smashing drabble! Silent syllables lick their lips. Liminal space. Love it mate
I was right there in that horrid dank room for hours standing over those love letters, grief thick in the air. ..how powerful our imaginations can be eh!Somehow adding the last line lifted the mood of the whole piece just enough I could leave.
prunus
Tick tock.
Thank you so much. I am not an experienced creative writer at all, so it's lovely to have any positive feedback. I don't write professionally but I am a teacher of courses like AP Language and Composition, or the US college-level equivalents like Composition and Rhetoric, so writing is a big part of my life, albeit in a much less sexy way than this.
This, by the way, is perfect to me. It makes me want to cry. Every sentence is doing something huge. Amazing.
Thank you, that means a lot to me, really a lot a lot.
LUCENT
Bright, they said. Advanced for her age. Almost TOO clever. To really make the most of her abilities, she’d need a first-rate education. The problem being that a school in such a deprived area could not attract premium staff, only the mediocre and jaded. Other children reacted predictably to her intellect, signalling their jealousy with fresh daily bruises.
Her mum despaired. There was no way she could afford private tutors.
Always a resourceful child, Alison hatched a persuasive solution.
Her little face lit by the flames, she beamed. Now that there was no school, they’d HAVE to help.
Wouldn’t they?
Bright, they said. Advanced for her age. Almost TOO clever. To really make the most of her abilities, she’d need a first-rate education. The problem being that a school in such a deprived area could not attract premium staff, only the mediocre and jaded. Other children reacted predictably to her intellect, signalling their jealousy with fresh daily bruises.
Her mum despaired. There was no way she could afford private tutors.
Always a resourceful child, Alison hatched a persuasive solution.
Her little face lit by the flames, she beamed. Now that there was no school, they’d HAVE to help.
Wouldn’t they?
Yu_Gi_Oh
天天好心情
Lucent:
Imagine that you walk, stunned, out of darkness, stooped, staggering, hair plastered to your forehead, and one claw-hand clutching a tiny fishing weight and a shell. You are not yet old enough to die, and not young enough for rebirth; you will have to live, scarred, with your failures marching behind, singing their chorus of lament. Just hope that they tire before you do.
Imagine that you pick your way out to the rocks, leaving concrete paths behind, fuck their plans, and you lie, skin warmed by the boulder closest to the ocean. The sun sets, but baby, you’re glowing.
Imagine that you walk, stunned, out of darkness, stooped, staggering, hair plastered to your forehead, and one claw-hand clutching a tiny fishing weight and a shell. You are not yet old enough to die, and not young enough for rebirth; you will have to live, scarred, with your failures marching behind, singing their chorus of lament. Just hope that they tire before you do.
Imagine that you pick your way out to the rocks, leaving concrete paths behind, fuck their plans, and you lie, skin warmed by the boulder closest to the ocean. The sun sets, but baby, you’re glowing.
May Kasahara
take me to the feeling
Best yet Yu_Gi_Oh <3
May Kasahara
take me to the feeling
LUCENT
A sticky pub table, two cigarette tips aglow. Conversation flows like wine. Her eyes full of clear spirit, infusing me with certainty. The cherries mingle into ash as we laugh.
A stained glass window, pouring cocktails of colours. Dutch courage with the lads beforehand. When I stumble over her dress, she makes a face like someone drinking neat vermouth.
A hospital room, rubbing alcohol sterile. She won't look at me, won't let me hold you. Last chance.
A school gate. You come running out, your eyes glowing like sunshine through twelve year old scotch. Daddy! you say. It warms me.
A sticky pub table, two cigarette tips aglow. Conversation flows like wine. Her eyes full of clear spirit, infusing me with certainty. The cherries mingle into ash as we laugh.
A stained glass window, pouring cocktails of colours. Dutch courage with the lads beforehand. When I stumble over her dress, she makes a face like someone drinking neat vermouth.
A hospital room, rubbing alcohol sterile. She won't look at me, won't let me hold you. Last chance.
A school gate. You come running out, your eyes glowing like sunshine through twelve year old scotch. Daddy! you say. It warms me.
Lucent through and through May Kasahara , sumptuous
