30. May 2006, 11:48
Daisy Inconstant
The rain falls softly on a tiny figure crouched in a plastic jungle of deck chairs. She turns her ivory cheek and forget-me-not eyes up towards the shaded night sky from whence the shower falls. She trembles from cold in her pink silk petals while the sun sleeps safe and warm. His dreamless orb is cradled by a pillowy cloud. Her wild head can find no rest.
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18. July 2005, 00:06
The Garden in the Slums: A Work In Progress
(This is stupid, underdeveloped, styles inadequately dealt out, and it reeks of sticky sickly sweet sentimentality. It’s some kind of train wreck. And although based on life, it does not equal life. Especially not the little girl. I’m not that vain. In a word, terrible. But I want practice. And it’s past my bedtime. I shouldn’t try to write so late at night.)
A lovely little girl sat sprawled out in the midst of a meadow. Her white cotton skirt billowed out around her and exposed her tanned lanky legs. She hummed quietly to herself and moved her arms in swaying, delicate interpretive patterns to the melody of her quiet song. Her face bent, creased, smiled, and worried with the emotion of the music in a pretty pattern. The bees and butterflies would hover on the daisies and poppies in the meadow just a moment longer than they needed to, apparently just to watch her quiet show.
He strolled through the maze of dirty, dark alleys, past graffitied walls and sweaty Hispanics in white tank tops towards the little patch of grass behind the rundown Victorian townhouse. This was where she would be. She was always there day dreaming.
It wasn’t hard to see why she picked this spot in the middle of filth and depravity. It was some kind of beautiful haven. A time capsule of secluded beauty sat there. It was the one falling down vestige of the century old past left, a quaint and wonderful beauty of a ruin where the sunshine broke through the dun of the inner city in a brilliant blaze. Somewhere where you could still feel hope and life despite the ugliness of the modern city buildings and the newer old buildings reeking of quick fix charity projects.
This little house with the overflowing overgrown tangle of weeds and wildflowers and spot of sunshine was the perfect haven for a little dreamer’s soul like hers. She insisted on calling the garden her “meadow” and even made handfuls of little paper mâché bees and butterflies to decorate it with since no real ones would visit. But her little white hands crafted the paper mâché so delicately and with such simple skill, that it was hard to tell that they weren’t real. He remembered the first time her little bees had shown up. She had a regular swarm piled around her feet, and it scared him half to death. He swelled up in all his manly bravery and strength to swoop her out of the dangerous den, but as she soared above the grass in his arms, she giggled to his frightened face.
“They aren’t real, silly. I made them out of paste and paper and stuff. Real ones won’t come, so I decided I’d make them myself.”
He set her down and blushed at his mistake.
He banged against a trash can making the cat inside it mewl in fear and jump out and scamper down the street. The noise jolted him back to his senses. His cheeks burned red. Just the memory of his mistake embarrassed him, and not because she made him feel stupid. It was because she was so gentle and unprepossessing about it. She smiled at his mistake as if it were nothing, she never held it over his head as stupidity or anything. She never even mentioned it. She was too nice and soft a creature for that. He shook his head. Where had he found such a perfect darling? The kind of girl who actually never did think much about herself and her clothes, and thought more about other people and what they wanted. An unselfish creature steeped in the joy of giving, constantly giving whatever she had. Her hands for work, her heart for love, and her soul for creation. Oh and how she did create! She was always creating some little thing, this or that. The bees and butterflies for instance. She didn’t create them for fame or money or adoration. She created just because she liked to do it. Because, as she said sometimes, “I just have to. I think if I wouldn’t, I might positively explode.”
He rounded a corner of a dilapidated wall of stone with her little face dancing before his mind, and there under a beam of sunlight she sat like an angel. She was singing softly in that angel voice of her’s, moving with those delicate little angel movements, and clearly engrossed in her little angelic fantasy. He was frozen a moment at the corner of the wall by the sheer beauty of that picture. Her lovely upturned lips murmuring quietly, her chocolate brown hair haloed by the sunlight, and her green eyes glistening from poignant emotion and sunbeams painted a picture almost of music come to life in the haven in the middle of the slums. His heart surged forward with the music and bliss of the tiny vision and he wondered whether this was his little darling or whether she had become an angel. The softness of her skin under that bright sunlight beckoned him over the same as the song floating from her pale pink lips.
He gently stirred out of his frozen trance. He had to step closer to that sphere of heaven. He tried to tip toe over to gather her into his arms, but he couldn’t really do anything as quietly and softly as he wished. His tip toeing was not delicate and so his lumbering footsteps had broken the tranquility of her dreams.
Yes, yes here he was. Just at the same time. He could never stay away. She never wanted him to either. He was one of those rare souls who understood her and how she worked. His mind revolved in the same way that hers did. It was dreadfully delightful. He never put on airs about it either as some of the silly other boys did who aspired to be her beaus. He always sang and played for her benefit alone. He never did things to elevate himself in her eyes. He did everything selflessly for the mere pleasure of doing it.
She turned ever so slightly against the sunlight to gaze up at his supple form rounding the corner. She swayed a little harder with the music under a quick intoxication at his presence. He hadn’t noticed her staring up at those languorous, expressive eyes of his, as he usually didn’t, so she took her moment. Subtly changing her tune, her voice grew gradually louder and her expression became gentler. She belted a short ballad of modern French to him, something she knew he wouldn’t understand. It was silly, sentimental stuff, but it was the same sort of thing that she felt so strongly.
She exploded into a louder song… in French. Oh how dare she! Her French may not have been so good, but she did look so very charming when she tried and her emotional expression was perfectly darling. His knees buckled a little under the new wave of bliss it sent to him. He smiled at her shining, angel face staring up into his and her shining arms spreading open so slightly to receive him there like a little child asking to be picked up.
“Your French is devastatingly lovely, my dear. I really wish you wouldn’t greet me with it, for I fear that someday it should kill me.”
He lumbered closer and tears sprung to her eyes. Oh beauty, oh rapture… her voice trickled from singing to speaking. She warbled feebly,
“Then oh do, do try not to be so damned pretty when you stumble upon me…”
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6. July 2005, 15:18
Pearls Before Swine (unplanned & off the cuff)
She carefully picked apart a string of pearls. Her eyes widened with delight at each tiny bead that dropped into the thick mud before her feet. Pearl after pearl after pearl until there was only one left on the fragile string. Only one pearl left from the gift that she was given. She moved her tiny white fingers to draw the pearl through the string to toss into the puddle before her strewn with the little mess of dirty beauty. She hesitated one moment, considering what she was doing. Her lust and pleasure flickered a moment, then increased tenfold. She plucked the little pearl entirely off the string and balanced it above the pit. She suddenly shut her eyes, and fell into the puddle. Pearl, wide eyes, white skin, and all. And the mud enveloped her. And she was lost.
we could have ended with her learning the err of her ways, but I like tragedy and taking your own morals from a story just a tiny bit better.