Finding a Community

Finding a Community

 

She thought she was the only one. Who else cries when

they look up at the night sky? Who else lies on the ground in wonder?

She tried to write poems about the stars, to capture them on film, to scribble them

on a canvas. Friends oooed and awwed. She knew her attempts were feeble imitations.

She drove to a State Park, known for its darkness, its lack of ambient

light, to see the glow, the glimmer, the magic of a sky filled with stars,

connect with the universe.

And there they were, a field of people, staring silently upward, crying.

They had their notebooks, and cameras, and sketchbooks but they knew

they would never capture the soul of the moment. She had finally found

her place in the world with people who understood. That’s when she knew,

the Starpainters are taking over now.

 

 

The Last Cousin

d’Verse Poets Pub – Prosery #3: Love After Love

I’m Kim from Writing in North Norfolk, welcoming dVerse poets to the third ever Prosery prompt, when we ask you to write a very short piece of prose that tells a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, in any genre of your choice.

As it’s flash fiction, we have a limit of 144 words; an additional challenge is to hit 144 exactly. The special thing about Prosery is that we give you a complete line from a poem, which must be included somewhere in your story, within the 144-word limit.

For the third Prosery, I’d like you to write a story that includes the following line from ‘Love After Love’, a poem by Derek Walcott:

‘You will love again the stranger who was your self’.

The Last Cousin

I carefully pack a dozen jars of homemade grape jam into a cardboard box. Each jar is wrapped in newspaper to keep them from banging together on the three-hour drive to Lake Erie. The buns and a tub of peanut butter are already in the back of my Jeep.

It’s the annual ‘Cousinfest” weekend. I’m the only one left of five. I plan to hold a remembrance ceremony on the beach. I’ll stay up all night eating PB&J sandwiches, that had been our tradition since we were teenagers. In the morning, I’ll scatter the ashes of cousin Number Four in the rose garden of the beach house.

I don’t know how I’ll carry on without those girls who were closer to me than sisters.

I hold tight to the last words of Number Four, “You will love again the stranger who was your self”.