Forever Young: Vermillion

Blog Manifesto

This blog is dedicated, as the title would suggest, to the qualities of being young. We are young writers. We are playful and sensitive, fluid and changing. We are unashamed with our art. We wonder at the world, puzzle over the meanings of things and twirl in delight at images and ideas that float by, grabbing at them as they pass. We are curious and constantly inquiring and prying concepts open and taking assumptions apart. We are on the ground, close to the earth. We have bare feet and wiggle our toes into nature. We carry our blankies still and wrap up cozy and comfy with each other and tell ghost stories and shiver at creepy things. We laugh and we cry and we take a lot of naps, drained from our outings and exertions.

We write as gifts to each other, tying them up in ribbon and leaving them around for each other to find, hiding and waiting for the person to wake up and read. Surprise! We weave our stories together to create a bond. One writes, then the other. then another again. We have a shared reality that we have crafted, bit by piece by patch, by string. We write simple, honest authentic things, with our unique voices. You can tell each one of us from the other, without knowing who wrote what. Our voices are clear and gentle and original. We whisper and our personalities roar! Like children, our feelings are strong, our passion for what we write shakes us. We are moved and sometimes left breathless, by our own words or the words of each other. We cannonball into each others spaces. We fall backward into each others writing, like into a pile of leaves or a soft bed. We gobble and grin and ask for more. (footnote kudos to JC)

Then we go to bed, wake up to a new day and do it all over again!

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Vermillion

The blade cut across guts. Liver, stomach, bile duct. Blood oozed. Blood leaked. Blood poured. All forgiving, hiding the crimes of yesteryear with its leisurely flow. Washing away sins committed in the sands of time. No hurry. All the time in the world at its disposal. He wiped the blade on her shirt and stood back, allowing the body to slowly slide to the ground. A streak of red marked its progress.

His knife was stained.

“On thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before.”

His hands were stained.

“Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”

His heart…where was it?

They took it away. They took away his childhood. They took away his innocence. They took away all the beauty of the world. They took away his heart. They cut it out from deep within his barely breathing body and they left a hole inside. Empty and hollow. A hole he had been trying to fill for the past twenty years.

He looked down at the bleeding corpse at his feet. Her dress was soaked in blood. A little trickle made its way out of her mouth. Such beauty. He looked down at the orphan waif. Tattered rags for a dress. Palms scratched and torn. Such innocence. He looked down. She was smiling. In death she found peace. He looked down till he could bear it no more. And then he walked away, the hole where his heart was to be, a little less empty.

1 comment:

SharonApril 18, 2012 at 4:21 AM
Beautifully executed (pun intended). I felt more empathy with JC's vile man....but you get the props for literary references and arc!
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