Prose

For the first time in longer than I can remember I'm able to write poetry and flash fiction at the same time. (Well, not unanimously, but the writing of one style does not impose a block on the other.) I still fail at longer fiction, but this makes me happy enough.

This still needs finishing:

Her thigh was alight with the buzzing, luminescent screen. One new message, she sighed. She knew who it was from. She turned away, only for it to begin vibrating again, spinning down the slope of her knee to the soft cushion of grass. She did not have to respond.

She ripped at the vibrant, green life before her instead. Stems of a peanut plant, seeding sprigs of grass, and butter-yellow dandelions all crumbled at her hand. She reached forward again and saw herself trying to grasp a knife, to pry it free of the binding grasp that held it. She yanked, uprooting a flowering strawberry plant. It evaded her. She cried out, clenching her fist around all in reach, slicing her palm on the blade.

Let go, she thought. Let go. The knife slipped back into the darkness of a foggy memory, pulled by that unyielding fist. Her hand smarted with pain. What are you doing? she remembered asking. She dug her fingers into the Earth--the soft, pliable dirt. She couldn't stop it. She had tried, but nobody listened. She made a fist beneath the grass. She pushed, driving her hand, knuckles first, deeper and deeper into the ground.

She saw the laughing mouth, the eyes that called blindly for attention. She hissed in anger. Stop it.