Post by ScarletMornings on Mar 12, 2006 11:18:06 GMT -8
something i originally wrote as a poem, but on suggestions decided to post as prose. i've never posted prose before, so help me out?
We calmly sit across from each other, separated by the elegant oak table, an heirloom of your prestigious name. And as I sip my cup of tea, I keep adding lumps of sugar to mask the faintly bitter taste of it until all I'm drinking is sweet sugar water, saccharine as your kisses were once, back when we had breakfast in bed. Meanwhile, you hide behind your newspaper and its bitter headlines declaim a cold world in stark black and white boxes; as darkly black as your hair, as pristinely white as your shirt, both neat and immaculate and unreachable, even though we sit just across from each other.
After I greedily savor the precious sweetness, I rise gracefully from the table without you even looking up and I wander through satire soaked walls that have absorbed our words, our feelings and reflected them, sharper and sardonic, tenfold. I’ve always heard that people were bitter, but I never realized just what that meant. Now I understand that the living definition is so much more cruel than the mere words Webster came up with. It trains and teaches you in every subtle nuance the word can possibly have, every single emotion and intonation and variation the word can take on. If wielded correctly, a word is sharper than even the best honed blade and you have always been an expert swordsman, and now, an expert teacher in the art of swordplay…
or is it word?
We meet each other again; polite, formal strangers seated across an oak table, infinitely vast in its ability to separate in a few feet. Although, we can’t blame the table for becoming as satirical as the walls. So many little barbs and snipes are bound to fall short eventually and our house is helpless but to pick them up. I raise my teacup to my lips and drink deeply but under the screen of sugar, I taste the faint bitterness of almonds. I freeze, your mockingly inquiring eyes upon me. Daintily, quietly, I finish my tea, then lift my head and blow you a kiss. You freeze in shock, belatedly trying to dodge a second slow. Then your eyes close, resigned to the inevitable, and finally, finally, you once again reach out your hand. I take it and we step, side-by-side, into the two places laid out for us. You whisper you are sorry, and the self-directed bitterness breaks me, until I am crying and you are crying and with our tears comes redemption. I close my eyes peacefully, my hand linked in yours. They close the lids and shovel the earth- ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But you and I are long gone, leaving nothing but an elegant gray headstone, graceful words trace a tale of two in love. Too bad graves don’t have a p.s., ours would be “If they could’ve forgiven, they could’ve loved again”. But that’s a little too bitter for a world that likes happy endings, and besides, ours ended up one- in death we no longer part.
We calmly sit across from each other, separated by the elegant oak table, an heirloom of your prestigious name. And as I sip my cup of tea, I keep adding lumps of sugar to mask the faintly bitter taste of it until all I'm drinking is sweet sugar water, saccharine as your kisses were once, back when we had breakfast in bed. Meanwhile, you hide behind your newspaper and its bitter headlines declaim a cold world in stark black and white boxes; as darkly black as your hair, as pristinely white as your shirt, both neat and immaculate and unreachable, even though we sit just across from each other.
After I greedily savor the precious sweetness, I rise gracefully from the table without you even looking up and I wander through satire soaked walls that have absorbed our words, our feelings and reflected them, sharper and sardonic, tenfold. I’ve always heard that people were bitter, but I never realized just what that meant. Now I understand that the living definition is so much more cruel than the mere words Webster came up with. It trains and teaches you in every subtle nuance the word can possibly have, every single emotion and intonation and variation the word can take on. If wielded correctly, a word is sharper than even the best honed blade and you have always been an expert swordsman, and now, an expert teacher in the art of swordplay…
or is it word?
We meet each other again; polite, formal strangers seated across an oak table, infinitely vast in its ability to separate in a few feet. Although, we can’t blame the table for becoming as satirical as the walls. So many little barbs and snipes are bound to fall short eventually and our house is helpless but to pick them up. I raise my teacup to my lips and drink deeply but under the screen of sugar, I taste the faint bitterness of almonds. I freeze, your mockingly inquiring eyes upon me. Daintily, quietly, I finish my tea, then lift my head and blow you a kiss. You freeze in shock, belatedly trying to dodge a second slow. Then your eyes close, resigned to the inevitable, and finally, finally, you once again reach out your hand. I take it and we step, side-by-side, into the two places laid out for us. You whisper you are sorry, and the self-directed bitterness breaks me, until I am crying and you are crying and with our tears comes redemption. I close my eyes peacefully, my hand linked in yours. They close the lids and shovel the earth- ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But you and I are long gone, leaving nothing but an elegant gray headstone, graceful words trace a tale of two in love. Too bad graves don’t have a p.s., ours would be “If they could’ve forgiven, they could’ve loved again”. But that’s a little too bitter for a world that likes happy endings, and besides, ours ended up one- in death we no longer part.
