I have been trying, like Little Women’s Jo March, to write about familiar things, so as practice I have taken a few moments of my life and written them down. I realize that they are mostly depressing moments from 2+ years ago, but I’m working on projecting emotions through writing, and these are the moments that I feel I captured well. So please, enjoy, and share your thoughts/critiques.
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I may smile for the camera
I might fool my friends with laughter
When I was 15 I was a bubbly, outgoing girl. I spent as much time as possible with my friends, and was called a social butterfly by many.
But underneath the lies
You will find the truth that hides
Mr. Andrews holds his classes in a gym room of roughly forty feet by twenty. Upon entering, you would first notice a tall, wooden compartment standing by the doorway, with an assortment of sticks, bags, short swords, and shoes all shoved into these compartments, or arranged against the left wall with no amount of orderliness. As you face either straight ahead or to the right, a wall of glass stares back at you. A small, knob-less door on the back wall leads to a scary closet that smells of old sweat where Mr.
"How are you today, ma'am?" I asked her, and she smiled up at me as only a graying, seventy-year-old lady can. "Just fine," came her reply, and so I started scanning her groceries. She only had a few, and I knew it wouldn't take me more than a minute. Then she would be gone, like all the others who had come before her. We would intersect each other, and then go off again, as much strangers to each other as ever. But before I started, she stopped me to ask a simple question.
I went to the park today. The woods there remind me so much of where I used to live. Before my family moved to the city, we lived on a farm outside of town. It was about sixty acres, evenly split between woods and grassland. We'd moved there from Dallas nine years ago, when I was eight. I spent the next eight years of my life there. And then we moved.
I started writing poetry during my English class last year. It was actually the very first English class for me, since my mom had never really been strong in that area. I was in the tenth grade, and studying mathematics at the eleventh grade, but because of my weak background in grammar, my mom had enrolled me in a ninth grade class. Even so, I was nervous that first day.
Since I'm new to Apricot Pie, I thought I should introduce myself, briefly, to you all. My art will certainly do a better job at revealing my personality than I ever could, but I thought I might provide a little bit of the bigger picture.
She is the quiet one
with the brown hair, blue eyes.
A dreamer
caught somewhere between
a woman and a child,
living a life united
by stirrups and manes.
Wanting to do
everything, with never enough
time for it all,
she rails against the
frustration of being only human.
Wanting to believe
in the good of man yet
so often disappointed -
wanting to let passion
shine through in everything
she does, never satisfied
with half-hearted effort.
...A hundred-word long babble...
The American College Dictionary defines the word "drabble" as meaning... "to draggle; make or become wet or dirty." I offer a second and more pleasing definition. A drabble is a piece of writing exactly 100 words in length, with a title of up to 15 addtional words. Drabbles are most commonly used in fanfiction and I thank my good friends at theonering.net for introducing me to them, but they can be about anything your heart desires. I have found them very addictive. Go ahead, try one for yourself - just make sure to count those words!
This is my life,
this is my world.
The hot summer sun.
the wind’s bitter cold.
The triumphs,
the tears,
the complaints no one hears.
The sweat and the blood,
the sore muscles, the mud.
The children’s smiles,
the weight of their trust.
The circles, the patience,
the praises, the dust.
The first canters,
the thrills,
and the traumatic first spills.
The lame ponies, broken reins,
the glory, the pain.
The long hours, low pay –
and the brilliant red sunset