I take it the challenge was cliches this week? I've been gone and skimmy.

cliché drabble: Home is Where the Heart Is

My roots stretch deep into the history that saturates the earth beneath the house’s foundation. I can see the ghosts of pumpkins my grandfather harvested from that garden at Halloween, and when the sun slants at dusk, shadows of my childhood still stretch across the lawn. I love this place.

But.

My heart is weaving down a coastal highway 3000 miles away. Bougainvillea twines through my fingers and tugs me westward, promises me it will brighten every March to come. Elephant seals beckon as they scoop sand across their backs, and a new ocean murmurs to me: home, home, home.

Kristin, that's lovely. I know that feeling.

wrod.

Yes, indeed. A gorgeous couple of drabbles.

I'm all bouncy for Allyson. Want good things to happen.

Fingers crossed for Allyson. I think we've all felt a version of Kristin's, which is why it tugs at us.

Personally? I'm over the moon in love with Ginger's beautifully cliche-ridden (heh) piece.

Ginger's knocked me out.

And it's Monday, which means our Tep, when time permitting, needs to give us a new topic.

BTW, I meant to ask this earlier, with memory like sieve: have we done "home" as a topic yet? I think we have...

I went back and checked all the previous topics, and we actually haven't done "home" yet. So, let's do it. But with a little something extra.

Challenge #55 (cliches) is now closed.

Challenge #56 is home, and the little something extra is this -- I pulled a handful of photos from the Look At Me website for you to use in your drabbles. Take a picture, and see how you can drabble it and "home" together.

As always, FEEL FREE to do your own thing -- just drabble "home," w/o using a picture. Or if a picture really wants to be drabbled, but not about home, then drabble it however it wants to be written.

If at all possible, though, I'd love to see what people come up with when combining the topic and the pictures.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

If you do use a picture, remember to link to the one you pick.

For Picture Number Four

From Vishnu's Bounty

She stands in sunlight, the baby in her arms, waiting to be fed.

This land, scorched with heat now, will be buried like Atlantis when the monsoons hit. The rain will be torrential, a living thing, the clouds all she will be able to see through the crippling downpour. The river where she washes the baby will no longer be peaceful; springing from Vishnu's feet, it will nourish, raze, destroy.

Her feet are as rooted to this river as Vishnu himself. Famine, heat, bloated bodies fouling the banks - it makes no difference. She has known, and will know, no other home.

That's wonderful, Deb.

For Photo # 1: [link]

Before he enlisted, Hugh and Margaret used to drive to the top of the ridge on Saturdays and look down across the valley. “There’s our farm,” he’d say, and point to the land his father had promised him, land where corn grew tall and black-and-white cows grew fat and gave sweet milk.

Before he lies down to sleep each night and just as he awakens each morning he looks at the picture. He fills in the colors--the many greens of the valley, the gentle, hazy blue of the summer sky, the glossy brown of Margaret’s hair and her steady hazel eyes.

He fights to live. He fights to go home.