13.   Something  using this sentence: You never really knew the voracity with which I loved you.-  Mode of creation open-( 3 pts)


Silence as close and cold as the grave that stands between us, that is all we have left now.  The rain falls, discreet in its disguise of the tears I find I cannot shed as I hover, disbelieving, amidst the trampled grass and fresh turned earth.  It seems only yesterday, full of unspoken promises and intentions, we dreamed of tomorrow and forever and the way things would always be.  Procrastination was ever the false friend of innocence, no one knows that better than the ones who are left behind.  Our unlived adventures mingle with the bitter taste of regret, of loss and despair.  Out of time and out of touch, whispered apologies that come too late and say too little fall on deaf ears that will never again know the sound of my voice.

It pains me now, that you never really knew the voracity with which I loved you, the deep and abiding hunger with which I savored the taste of your affection but was too afraid to acknowledge.  Every breath drawn and swallowed, dying with the words I bit back and could not speak now tastes as sour and stale as the haunted reflection of my soul.  You deserved everything I had to give and more, and yet I could not overcome the fear, could not find the strength to share with you all that I was.  You held back nothing and that is exactly what I gave in return.

All that are left now are memories, like monochromatic photographs of the history of our brief time together, developed with passion and tarnished by shame and remorse.  I will treasure them forever, despite the pain they bring, as reminders of a lesson I never should have had to learn.  So simple, to find the words to tell you all that you meant to me, and yet seemingly impossible in the undertaking.  All the notes I wrote but could not leave, the ones I kept for the day that I could, they lie in a wasteland of fury and grief, read and reread, tear stained and torn on my floor.  Why is that now that I have the courage to say what is in my heart, there can be nothing left to say?

"Beloved of all," that is what they say of you, and the truth rings like the clarion call of the seraphim.  If only they knew... if only you knew... I loved you more than words could ever say.  Perhaps, one day, when the grief fades and the despair falls away to reveal the brightness and light that only suffering can leave in its wake... perhaps that day, I'll realize... you knew that too.
   

8.       Something which incorporates  the following words/ things: Sunrise, toilet, Atlas, beetle, orange blossoms, sand- Mode of creation open-   ( 5 pts)


I've gotten really good at hiding when the trucks come to unload their treasures.  If you go far enough, out where the beetles and the rats hold court in the dead of night, the people never come.  I can't say as I blame them.  Those things have been here so long that all the good stuff has long since been carted off.  Its not worth the trek, except I've seen what happens when they catch you, when the vans come to disgorge the dogs and the men and women with their clipboards and pinched faces.  Once you're found, you disappear forever.  I'd rather hide than be disappeared.

Luckily, mama taught me everything I needed to know before she left for the land of dreams.  I didn't want to leave her, but the smell there got so bad it kept me up at night and I was afraid the dogs would follow it and find me.  I worry about her sometimes, my mama, even though she told me not to because she'd be safe where she was going.  I miss her, but she said she'd see me again, so I reckon all I have to do is wait until she comes to find me, but its been a long time.  That's why I have to hide.  Mama can't find me if I'm disappeared.

Every day at sunrise I go to mama's garden and tend the plants.  She made a flower bed out of someone's toilet, at least that's what she said it was called, and I remember watching as she filled it with dirt and sand and sprinkled the tiny seeds from the package we had found a few days before.  We never could figure out what those little plants were called, but the orange blossoms in the picture sure were pretty.  I just hope they bloom before mama wakes up.  She'll be so proud of me and how well I took care of them.

The rest of the day I spend hiding and sorting the trash from the treasures.  There are so many things to find, but sometimes you have to dig pretty deep to get to the good stuff.  At least that's what mama said.  If I think real hard and close my eyes, I can still hear her voice saying "Baby mine, not all the pretty stuff is on the surface, and not everything that's pretty is treasure.  Its all in the way you look and how hard you try to find it."  I figure I'll understand it better when I'm older, she said I would, and mama's always right.  Except that time she told me some guy named Atlas had to hold up the sky.  That was just silly.  Nobody's THAT tall.

At night, when I lay down in my bed of rags and towels and close my eyes, mama comes to visit me in my dreams.  I tell her all about the treasures I found, and try not to beg her to stay, I want her to think I'm all grown up now.  Maybe she'll be ready to come get me when she sees how smart I am.  Or maybe all I have to do is find the right treasure, the perfect treasure that's pretty inside and outside that I had to work hard and dig right down to the bottom to get.  I bet that's it.  I just hope I know it when I see it.

She wore her green dress, the one the color of spring onions.  I can still remember the way it swirled, so delicately around her bare feet as she spun, laughing in the dead and decaying garden.  Dust flared up between her toes, around her ankles, coating her skin in a thin grey veil as she threw her arms up to the sky, head tilted back to welcome the incoming rain.  As the first adventurous drop fell upon her charming and dainty nose, she laughed and it was the purest, most beautiful sound I had ever heard.  When she turned to look at me, my breath caught and my heart stood still.  Her deceptively innocent eyes flashed from blue, to violet, to the most verdant green I had ever seen, all the shades of earth and life wrapped into one captivating variegated color.

Spellbound, I could not move as she slowly began to dance.  Though the steps were chaotic, she placed her feet with care, gracefully precise as she sashayed around the forgotten flowerbeds, the staccato rhythm of the rain her only guide to tempo.  My umbrella lay forgotten on the stone bench beside me.  Just watching her, in her glorious freedom and timeless beauty, green dress and swirling auburn hair twirling and caressing her like velvet ribbons in counterpoint to her mesmerizing performance, I yearned to join her.  I started to believe, and in doing so, opened my eyes to a whole world I had never imagined.

All around our corner of the world, I could see a brutal storm raging, see the lightning strikes assaulting the ground and taunting the world from behind their dark, eery cloud wall fortress.  The rain drove down in near solid sheets, obscuring my vision when I tried to look past the dried, brown border of dying hedges.  Inside, however, in this poor, deserted garden, though I was by now drenched to the bone, we faced a gentle, spring rain, the kind of rain you imagine brings the world to life.  The clouds were still grey, but of a strange, soft and fluffy variety, with a golden sunglow peeking around their edges.  The unnatural beauty of the scene was breathtaking in itself.

The performance, that wondrous and heartbreaking dance I could barely tear my eyes from, however, was the reason for our being there.  She had asked, and I, in a moment of unprofessional weakness, had succumbed.  I found myself not regretting the decision.  The sheer happiness I could see in her face was reward enough to bear any punishment I could face at the hands of my employers.  I smiled to myself to see her spirits so lifted, and that is when I noticed the changes happening around me.

Everywhere she stepped, everywhere a rain drop dripped from her flesh to the wounded ground, new life sprang up in her wake.  The tiny, first blades of spring grass appeared first, delicate and whisper soft, tickling the bare soles of her feet as she passed over them.  They were closely followed by flowers and herbs of every kind, a riot of color, texture, size and shape in a forgotten corner of the world.  I blinked rapidly, waiting for the vision to fade and my eyes to clear but desperate to hang on to the images before me, desperate to belong.

She stopped before me, smiling softly, and held out a hand I finally did not hesitate to take.  As she welcomed me, I allowed myself, at last, to accept.  I accepted that there were things in the world I could not see, or understand, but that did not make them false, that this girl, my ward for so long, had never lied or made up a story in the time that I had known her, that she was more than she seemed and would always be so.  She saved my life that day, as she danced with me through the rain and wind.  She showed me the beauty and awe of a world I had never dared believe existed, and welcomed me home.

Now, as I lay here, dessicated and withering myself, I smile at the memory. She sits with me, even as I make my peace with death.  Even now I can feel her soft skin holding my hand, hear the gentle and nurturing melody of the earth as she sings a lullaby to soothe me.  I don't kid myself.  I know the end is here; not tomorrow, not next week or next month, but now.  She is my only family, this woman I have known as a girl, and she alone will walk with me through the gates.  I have faith that, even as she brought life to that dying plot of land so many years ago, so now will she bring new life to me even as I lay dying.

My last sight is of her face and a sad smile, silent tears falling gently upon my face a she leans down to lay a kiss upon my brow.  And I am content.