West (an acrostic poem)

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Watching the sun make its escape as it sinks beneath the horizon

Everything becomes more magical in that twilight moment

Snippets and whispers of other realms peek from beyond the veil

That opportunity sets as darkness brings down the curtain

Write (an acrostic poem)

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Words dribble out of my fingers

Raw unfiltered fragments of imagination

Incandescent with flashes of brilliance

Though often followed by long droughts of darkness

Engulfing everything in shades of mediocrity

Flare (an acrostic poem)

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Flames leapt from the cylinder illuminating the darkness

Leaving Charlene blinded as she stood still among the dancing white flakes

All she could think about in that moment was the story of the little match girl

Realizing that she was going to reprise the main lead role unless there was a Christmas miracle

Every year after, Charlene would leave out a hot toddy and peanut butter cookies because… well they were his favorite

Hope (an acrostic poem)

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How can you open your eyes every morning

Only to find so much darkness around you

Pushing you further into despair

Evict those thoughts since you can create light and let it shine

Shade (an acrostic poem)

 

So everyone turned to Clarice after Bob’s anonymous claim of infidelity

His smug smile staining the words even more

As Clarice’s spirit dimmed further under her friends’ looks of surprise and horror

Didn’t they understand the darkness she lived in?

Everyone should have a chance of finding a bit of sunlight, shouldn’t they?

 

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Hole (an acrostic poem)

Her absence left his heart bleeding

Obviously this was a mortal wound

Leaching what little joy he had left into the darkness

Even as the rest of the world didn’t notice

 

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Narrow (an acrostic poem)

Neal felt the walls come closer together the farther underground he went

As they constricted his movement, his breathing became more rapid

Restricting his vision to a narrow strip of darkness in front of him

Raspy sounds escaped his mouth as his breath became shallow

Obstinately he pushed on as his vision began to gray out

Wiggling free he took a deep breath and felt the freedom to the bottom of his lungs

 

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Light (an acrostic poem)

Love came down as a baby

Igniting a beacon in the night

Giving hope to those in the darkness

Hope to those that had lost it

That all could find their way back home

 

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Reborn (a 200 word start)

Her world was pitch black darkness.  Actually, it was darkness and water, but after not breathing for so long she didn’t really notice the wetness.  She didn’t have a concept of time, but she did know her chains hand rusted and broken a while back.

She felt around the floor of her prison and found a large stone.   She picked a spot she thought was the same as last time and began hammering.  It might take millennia to get through, but she had that and more.  Still, she hoped she had picked the right direction.  She didn’t relish chipping her way through Mount Torlock.

That’s when she heard a muffled noise to her right.  She shifted her attention and started to hammer there.  She had been pointing in the wrong direction.  How long had she been off course?

Suddenly there was an explosion of sound.  Light poured into her prison as the water poured out.  She shoved herself out of the hole, reborn again into this world, and this time she would do the swatting.  Before any swatting could occur, though, she retched up the water in her lungs and stomach next to her.  Not the start she had imagined…

 

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Life Burns (a 100 word story)

He poked at the fire, trying to make it brighter to push back the overwhelming darkness.  Sparks danced into the air, but his feeble attempts failed to make that part of the world any more luminous.  Pissed off he unzipped and proceeded to urinate on the flames, drowning them and allowing the darkness to flood into the space.

He laughed as it so epitomized how his life treated him.

He decided to wander back to his cabin.  Being fire blinded, he tripped on a branch, falling flat on his face.  “Nope, that’s my life,” he mumbled in the fallen leaves.

 

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