Throwback Thursday: 10 Year Challenge
As an ode to the current viral trend, here’s a poetry piece I wrote nearly a decade ago during a writing challenge. TW there are themes of abuse discussed, particularly domestic violence. This writing challenge was one of many I attempted to complete; the specific task was to pull words randomly from the dictionary and write something based on or inspired by those words.
Microbe [mahy-krohb]- noun - 1. a microorganism, especially a pathogenic bacterium.
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You’ve always loved rainbows, never quite touched one, nevertheless feeling a part of it. You are a perpetual shade of violet, maybe red, or even indigo depending on the weapon. Most times, congruent to rainbows, your colors show when the storm withers away and the sun peeks through the clouds, bright yellow, foreshadowing something better. But being reminded of the chaos endured when wounds turn cold and your hues have turned old. Green has always signaled that there’s life waiting to bud after parasites dig away at your petals.
Ring around the rosie...
Rings around the rose, a browned one, pressed between the heavy pages of a fairy tale gone wrong. Listen closely and you’ll hear the nursery rhyme skipping off of skin that lost another fight with inhumanity. Black rings around the rose; they resemble a fungus sucking the life out of a delicate flower.
You are lovely on your own but…
You are lovely but…
You are…
You. Dependent on lightning storms that zigzag into your heart to shut down your nervous system. You don’t fight weather; like most living things you drink filthy water because you cower under showers of pain and open your eyes after the rain, looking through the mud for whatever’s still drinkable. And when you see that hint of blinking blue reflected off of the shallow pools in your hands you are certain of the devil’s tricks because God would never sucker you into believing that wrath could be so beautiful.
You are always looking for the good in that microbe of a man. letting the leech back onto your skin.
You; never discerning that the “quiet after the storm” isn't it subsiding; baby, you’re in the eye of it. Watching through the haze of the wind as its blows rotate the colors on your skin again.
You’re addicted to the brief resemblance to rainbows.
Before your colors turn green and you’re reminded that you ain’t as lucky as four-leaf clovers, and the closest you’ve come to having a pot of gold lies in the back of your closet.
A graveyard for the sorry bracelets, and sorry earrings, and sorry everythings.
They get tossed because his "sorry’s" are unworthy of being adorned by a blessing from the Sun.
The Son would want you to build an ark for protection to sail away from that storm.
Stop beating yourself up for not loving him enough to make him happy, he's already handling that for you.
Take the salt from your tears and rub it into your wounds… the stings mean you’re alive.
I wish I could find the original 30-day challenge because I’d like to try it again this year to see what creative writing I could come up with. I’ll do some digging, but in the meantime thank you for reading.