For The Sunday Muse prompt #120, and B who in (wo)manfully wrestling pain to a standstill reminds us to hope again… ** Remember, in the failing light of falling night, when the weight of the world feels like a thing around your neck, that we see you, proud against the night- feet planted firmly in the mushy earth, unflinching in the maelstrom. Like the North Star sometimes hidden, sometimes peering out from behind the clouds, a beacon showing home we see you and believe again.
For The Sunday Muse Prompt #119, Artistic Photography Dreamlike Portrait Photography by Damien Casals: ** You and I are becoming one, our unspoken words a voice, mellow in its timbre, its echo light like a soft hand yet firm, kneading out the noise from the silence that we share. In that silence of being and being present, of returning and reforming, of holding out against the pressure of the world, are broken things becoming whole again, each breath a small victory won by persistence, a fresh shoot pushing its way through the things that rage has razed.
For The Sunday Muse prompt #118: ** In the chaos of water meeting water and breaking free, each splash a hop of joy freed to twirl and twist and kick and be, a body bent fluidly flowing like a shout of delirious joy, life echoes.
For The Sunday Muse prompt #117: ** Breathe, in spite of beauty, in spite of the frailty of the blue orb floating free beneath your feet, stunning you. Breathe, because of beauty because the earth hugs you like a mother tethers her unborn child fragile in its parts guiding, calling, growing feeding. Breathe, because home centres you because wherever you are times and seasons are locked in an eternal dance Breathe, because.
For The Sunday Muse Prompt #116. Image “Seeing Black & White” photography by Susie Clevenger ** Yesterday’s ghouls are slowly disappearing, fading like the night light once bright but now dappled, wisps of grey carried away in our slipstream, lingering like the dust a knight’s steed leaves in the frenzy of flight. But the promise is a mirage, objects in a mirror are closer than they appear and though we run as though the wind bears us, yesterday’s shadow lurks in the space between the things we leave and the things that disappear
For The Sunday Muse prompt #115: ** Let the first sniff hit you, let the faint hint of the juice pressed and aged be like incense wafting up, a prayer to Dionysius for a blessing on this rich red liquid, chilled, swirled and sipped. Let the low heat linger, let its essence slowly spread, warming the insides of your mouth let its heft spread like a warm embrace across your tongue. Let it rise Let it rise.
For The Sunday Muse prompt #114: \\\* May the pains of today’s desires lose themselves in the fragrance of a love reborn, the pained passion of unrequited love find itself returned in time like a blossom that speaks, a sacred whisper to the soul colouring everything in the light of a rose, beautiful in its bleeding yet whole, because the Lover and the Loved like thorn and rose find themselves entwined, from past pain and tortured paths, delirious joy arising.
For The Sunday Muse prompt #113: \\\* The light in her eyes mirrors the mirth, in the wry smile that still, some days, wraps itself around her lips, a bird, free, born of the wild borne by the wind. The heavy scent of summer, of flowers blooming and of squirrels flitting between the trees, reaches down into the depth of the memories she bears within, the delight of summers past simmering, then bubbling to the fore though her fingers can no longer coax life from the dry earth or press pleasure into a cone.
For the Sunday Muse prompt # 112: \\\* Sometimes I carry the weight of the world upon my head, its heft held between the twin peaks of forgotten and accepted things, a history curated not by those who waver at the threat of war but those who embrace its vagaries, who daily pour out a libation to destruction. What seems like the stillness of a boat in quiet waters only hides the furious paddling of a mind being torn apart as it wrestles with the tension between conforming and desire. ...
For The Sunday Muse prompt #111: \\\* what we remember of the past are the things the mind allows, the harshness of being hacked into a thousand tiny pieces assuaged by the desire to forget, to not let the horror of the past hold the present hostage, to find a path that winds through the remains of pillage to a coherent whole. what we learn in the end is that skirting the hole where our kin should be is akin to yielding to the pressure of a hand pressed against our throat, to feed the pleasure of the ghouls hovering over our history. ...