Monday, October 29, 2012

Magpie Tales 141 - Flash Fiction

Magpie 141 photo prompt

"Taking shelter in the dead is death itself, and only taking all the risk of life to the fullest extent is living." - Rabindranath Tagore
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Sweet couple. In another life it is me kissing Julius goodbye.

A shower heralded the end of summer and, unbeknownst to us, the beginning of the end of our world. They said the rumors could not be true; I gave no thought to shoes, which one day we'd be forced to do without, or to my hair, which would be shorn and tossed aside. We allowed the heavens to soak us to the skin, turning our mouths to each other instead of the skies.

It is so long ago that his memory has been nothing but an occasional brushstroke upon my consciousness. The rain is, by turns, a fearsome enemy awakening my instinct for survival or a solvent sending bitterness and regret into the earth where they belong. Either way, it is a reminder that nothing in this life lasts forever.

I have never used an umbrella since that day.
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Want to join in? Click the link below the picture. Write a poem or short vignette using the picture featured in the Magpie post as your inspiration. I chose the added challenge of keeping it to 150 words.  

10 comments:

  1. Almost sounds like it turned into the apocalypse after that...

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  2. :-) I left it open for the reader, although I had a specific historical event in mind. That's the fun thing about flash fiction.

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  3. ... this sent chills throughout my body.

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  4. smiles...the umbrella at the end is a really great touch...you really give lots of life, and heartbreak as well to this pic...very well done...

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  5. A grim but groovy poem.
    I liked it.

    =)

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  6. You're quoting Tagore..love that. He and I share the same mother tongue.

    Dig the piece, and its ambivalence.

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  7. The story could be anywhere, anytime. But the emotions stay with you a long time.

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  8. Wow Lisa...intense. What this brings to my mind is the Holocaust. Their love, torn apart, by the storm that will will send her to a concentration camp where she'll survive, and his fate....
    Sadly beautiful. An agent really needs to find you.

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  9. You captured the horrors of war here...powerful...

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