Tuesday 29 November 2011

The Summer House

This week's challenge is to write 100 words about the picture below.

Hmm.

Lovely picture.

 picture of window with wooden shutters and a wooden frame


 
                                                  The Summer-house

                                 I sought our summer-house today. I thought
                                 to make it mine – now, in your absence – to untwine
                                 time’s clinging tendrils. I thought to short-
                                 circuit all the days we spent there, un-cross
                                 its tangled spaces, absorb all traces of you –
                                 dissolve them in the acid of my loss.

                                It wouldn’t let me in. Your line of trees,
                                limes in their summer-prime, trained to your ways,
                                smoke-screened the window with a haze of
                                liquid green, unyielding to my gaze. The shutters,
                                wide, like arms to fold me in, just pinned me back:
                                suppose, with someone else, you lay within?





18 comments:

  1. Interesting take, with the narrator blaming the summer-house for refusing admission... Like the idea of a soured relationship having its own acid turned back on it to make itself disappear, too.

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  2. Powerful stuff. I love the layers of plot and symbolism. His trees reflected in the glas meant she couldn't see in. And the ultimate betrayal of him sleeping there with someone else meant she could never reclaim it. So much in 100 words.

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  3. I like the unusual rhyming scheme - it's so subtle that you almost, but not quite, miss it. Like glimpsing something from the corner of your eye.

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  4. Thank you so much for all your comments. They mean a lot!

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  5. Great piece, Lorely. I love the way you have played with the sounds in the words! Very clever.

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  6. Oh, that is stunning. Made me feel very emotional.

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  7. Thank you both, I'm really glad you like it!

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  8. Lorely - your words, they created a tangled web, it felt like I were pushing aside the emotions like vines in a rainforest to get closer to the summer house. It beautifully oozed tension, I can't believe you got all of that in within 100 words.

    xTin

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  9. I lost myself reading this. It's wonderfully sad.

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  10. A story of loss, betrayal and the need to move on, but not being quite ready to - too many emotions (some too powerful to overcome).

    Time is a healer - a friend with an axe and a can of paint might speed things up though ;o

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  11. Beautiful transitions, Robin

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  12. A great take on the prompt. Love the different rhyming style

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  13. This is a great piece; so many emotions portrayed that you can't but help feel for the character.

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  14. This is a very subtly, deep sad, full piece! I've read it a few times & have changed through loss through death or separation to an affair. Really powerful writing Lorely!

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  15. I especially like this one! Reads like Wordsworth. Great lines in this: 'dissolve them in the acid of my loss' and 'smoke-screened the window with a haze of liquid green' and 'The shutters, wide, like arms to fold me in' are my favorites, but its all great. Re-read this many times. Inspired. :D

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  16. Interesting, loving the use of words. . . and the layers

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  17. This is a beautiful poem. I like 'time's clinging itendrils' especially.

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