OOH, Deb, I really like that. The sentiment, and the way you expressed it.

Also, I have the chapters you sent and will be reading them after the 2nd cuppa joe has kicked it. I am gronkly today.

Kewl.

Teppy? Topic?

Thanks for the reminder, Deb! I'm feeling under the weather, and my head is very very muzzy.

Challenge #63 (meat) is now closed.

Challenge #64, suggested by Deb, is trust. Refer to the Prince song if you need inspiration. Or even if you don't need inspiration but just feel like jumping up and dancing.

The Monday not-writing curse strikes again...

I've got a lovely smutty scene in a hayloft going in another window, so I'm trying not to distract my muse.

Conversation with the Dead

oooh, child, got me walkin' down a broad highway...

Why should I trust you? Give me one good reason.

Because I was the first thing you ever loved, the first man to understand what you were, what you could do, I was your song, your music, your laughter, your tears, your kisses hard, kisses fast, kisses deep, your long slow slide into impossible heat, your animation, your love, your world.

But you let me go, didn't love me enough, let me disappear. And then you died.

Why should I trust you? One good reason...

Because you will always love me.

I'm feeling less than gifted today, but here's my best shot at "Trust": I suppose it says something about me that I only trusted him once he told me we wouldn’t date. Maybe a self-image hangover; maybe just relief that my physical impairment hadn’t made him shudder, virtually, or the pileof honest about a tragedy greater than any of mine.(although part of me always clings to being the resident Job everywhere I go, champion of “Ain’t it Awful” ten years running, as payback for the rotten parts of my life, I get to make others feel like shit for complaining.) From the beginning, this game was not a go. Who wants to play “Ain’t it Awful?” when somebody else always wins? I trusted him because he made me put Poor Crippled Girl away. I trusted him because he let me trust myself.

Trust Drabble # 1:

I can still see the mend where our fractured trust is pieced together.

A fault line there from when I ran him off the road the first time he cheated on me.

“I didn’t know you cared that much.”

A little blemish from the day the ER couldn’t find him. They operated anyway. Next day, he changed his cell. It never really came to a full rupture, just a little bubble.

I don’t even know what it would take to break away now. We move with a crab’s clumsy crawl to the inevitable double funeral conjoined at the marriage certificate.

Ouch, you two.

Play Me

Here we are, side by side, left to right, knees touching, no farther apart than the reach of each other's breath.

Into this moonlit quiet, this protected space, no one can intrude. No one can find this small pocket of placidity, where any turmoil is in the desire itself. You reach out, hands that are longer than mine, stronger than mine, seasoned by years of music, key, string, all the tools.

Tonight, willingly, I make myself into one of your tools. You reach for me, breast and belly. The instrument, trusting the player, maker of her music, closes her eyes.