WordSmith discussion

I've started a new forum for our short stories, just cause the others discussions were getting very full. Feel free to post work here now.

Here is a short something I wrote just the other day. Haven't been doing a lot of writing, I've been so busy. Hope it's up to standard.

Evanescent


He happened to look up as the train went by. Perhaps there was a reason, a magnetic pull that made him see me through the windows, tinted though they may be. I hoped he liked what he saw.
The autumn wind was something fierce this year ruffling his hair, but his arms were bare. It’s amazing what I can remember from a brief minute, from a brief glance. I turned in my seat, not wanting to draw attention but needing to look back.
I don’t look back for anything. It’s one of those rules; the special code of ethics I built for myself when nothing made sense and life was messy cause chaos reigned. Never look back. But he made me break it, break that small part of me and I found it a relief. Like I’d been holding my breathe with planning and rules. When I decided to stop, I found still breathing and still very much alive.
That scared me.
We were both reading. Perhaps the same book. What would be the chances of that? Slim to none. I know it, he knows it, but still there is hope that maybe a chain no matter how thin might hold us together. I looked at my book. What page was he on, the same as I? Ahead or behind, what if I knew the end before he, would he want to know it too? Make sure our heroes got what they deserved, if they made it through at all?
Books are like that. No one thinks of all the hands that held them; touch their covers and using the pages as a map through the fictional lives of people who don’t exist. Caring about the same people, the same make believe dream, if he was reading the same book as I then we weren’t strangers at all.
Books can make you dream. They give you silly ideas like that. Make you stop and say, no, I’m not alone like I thought.
And so while the train gathered speeds and he became a small dot on a bench, on a platform waiting and reading, I wondered why I looked back at all. Did it really matter? I’d never see him again, the chances of that were slim to none. Like reading the same book, it’s nice to dream but it doesn’t really happen.
We head forward and I’m still the only one looking over my shoulder at a landscape and an idea that’s slowly disappearing.
Then I look at my book in my lap and the dotted words marching like ants across the page, orderly going where they’re meant to and meaning what they mean to. It’s simple but complicated, delicate but stalwart
Books plant ideas in our heads that normally wouldn’t grow there.
Ideas like looking at a shadow and seeing a face, and thinking, anything is possible.

Hey_jude, your writing never fails to impress and amaze me. Your writing is filled with so much emotion, so much meaning:)

YOU.
ARE.
AMAZING.

I don't know about amazing...but thank you:D

Here's one of mine. I haven't been writing that much lately, I don't really like most of my stuff but I do like this one. It's quite short, hope that's okay.


It was a lonely little place. The sadness of it was what initially drew me. It sat there, like some deserted little brother of the Berlin Wall, its florescent spray paint etchings now looking like the work of a preschooler. It was once been the foundation of a house, I think. The house had probably long since been gone and now all that remained was a square of dour grey bricks just managing to stay together.
There is a can of black spray paint in my bag. I have been carrying it around for days now. Trying to find just the right place to leave my words. It’s harder than you think, you know.

I am not a defacer of property. I am a messenger.

It’s been turning around in my mind all day, churning like the water under a boat’s propeller. I need to leave something on this little wall, this forgotten piece of humanity. It shouldn’t be allowed to crumble into nothing without anyone even knowing it’s there.
It was a foundation once. It once was a house. It had a family.

It’s getting dark now. The time when all the artists come out of the hidden places in the city to leave their signatures. I intend to leave mine tonight. My first one. It’s got to be good.

I take the can out of my bag. Kneeling down beside the wall, I stroke the rough bricks, the grainy surface grating across my palm like sandpaper. The words come to me gently. In large looping letters, I leave my first message. It’s almost ironic in its simplicity. But it’s mine.

“Whatever is a reality today, like the realities of yesterday, will be an illusion tomorrow.”

Here’s looking at you city.

I run away.

Wow, Sleeper. I don't know why you don't like your work. This piece is beautiful, simple but haunting. In the end it's not the length...it's the words...