Aramis’ Workshop
topic · writing

Across the Room Filled with People That Are Less Important than You

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Needed a break from Emarosa.
NaNoWriMo continues on.
For the writers, I hope your writing goes well.

“Crayon for a Writer”

I wanted to draw a picture, but I didn’t know where to start.
I’m terrible with fine lines and erasers never work.
Tried tracing once or twice, but it never comes our right.
I always crumple the paper.

I wanted to draw a picture, but the colors were all gone.
It was supposed to be a gift for you, or was it for me?
It would’ve been a lovely sunset, or perhaps a sunrise.
Those are less depressing.

I wanted to draw a picture, but the setting wasn’t right.
The music was off and lighting’s all wrong.
I guess I could decorate an envelope.
But I’ve no letters to send.

I wanted to draw a picture, but I didn’t know how it’d end.
Hard to begin when there’s nowhere to go.
Graphite turns the page from gray to grayer.
Keeps the wastepaper basket employed.

I wanted to draw a picture, but I didn’t know what to say.
So I wrote you a poem instead.

Does It Almost Feel like Nothing Changed at All?

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Today is the start of NaNoWriMo.
Let’s see what it brings for Emarosa.

“(N)ever More”

The old piano reached its crescendo as she turned back toward the window.
No one was there. Of course not, no one was ever there. But still, no one was there.
There used to be so much more, or had it all been only in her memory?
Even so, if it lived on within her, then wasn’t it hers to keep?

Her fingers danced along the keys, a little slower than they used to be.
Time is seldom a kindness.
But no infirmity could hinder her grace.
Nothing would stop her from playing their song.

They had met as little more than children, and many years later parted all but the same.
One wanted the world on a string, one content to be strung along.
No great travesty befell them, no horror too ugly to speak.
It was only themselves they could not overcome.

She could be happy enough, it’s true.
There’s no shame at all in simply getting by.
Whether she strives for everything or nothing at all, the sun also rises.
She knows, because not a day goes by she doesn’t watch the horizon.

So the song she keeps playing on, not for any good reason but perhaps to fill the empty space.
For if she lets the walls fall down around her, then what are her hands for?
She pretends she doesn’t think about it, but she couldn’t ever let herself forget.
For if she lets go of what she loves, what is her heart for?

The old piano cascades echoes all around, from the window to the wall, and beyond.
And no one was there. Of course not, no one was ever there.

Listen to Me While I Talk to the Wall

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Been working on some revisions to Emarosa.
Want to post the revisions, and maybe a new chapter by the end of November.
Dedicating NaNoWriMo to fixing up and finally finishing up Emarosa.

“Listen”

Words weave ideas, opinions, imagination. There’s always so much to say.
But in speaking, so much more is lost.
The ideas left unspoken, opinions never expressed. Imaginations left unshaped.
There’s an old saying, that we see the world not as it is, but as we are…

I found myself obscured beneath a cascade of leaves and branch-y limbs.
It’s the sort of place you’d love to get lost in, even though you always hated the idea of being lost.
Tree stalks larger than giants stretched as arms from the Earth, as if to accompany an early morning yawn.
This is where the fairytales roam, I imagine.

The steady flow of a not-so-babbly brook trickled along with the critch-crunching of leaves beneath my clumsy shoes.
Places like this aren’t meant for shoes.
Speckled rays of sunlight blitz to and fro through the leafy canopy, as if to guide the way before a fall breeze reminds that a sweater would’ve been a fine choice.
Of course, I think you would’ve suggested a jacket.
A fine wool one with buttons much too large for their little cut-outs.

Chipmunks, watching my gargantuan feet clomp along, scurry as I try to catch a glance.
I can never tell if they’re scared or just looking for a good game of hide and go seek.
I think you’d tell me it’s both. I’d reply it’s neither. We’d bicker the afternoon away, like old times.
We’re not that old to be having old times, though in this place you could hardly tell.

They sometimes say that life is a story. They sometimes say it’s a song.
Some insist that it’s everything in between, and more still say it’s nothing at all.
I don’t know enough to know what any of it is, or means, or if it even matters.
I think used to pretend, but the squirrels play, the birds chirp, the fish… fish.
As I lie down to stare at nothing in particular, to waste the afternoon away,
all I wonder is what you’d have say.

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