I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all; I particularly like that line about her cup still being stained with his memory. And that line about the world being a quiet place - once the wind dies down - is a poignant statement about interior noise, and how we hear.

As for looking at old stuff? It doesn't make me groan, so much as it makes me blink. I wrote a novel at fifteen - a really really really bad novel, and I can look at it and think, whoa, I was really 15, you know? I mean, I had fifteen like a broken heart, full technicolour. But if the novel was bad, it was also reallyo trulyo me, at fifteen.

9 haikus

Very impromptu, I'm going to convert another story idea I had a year or two ago. Cause it was about two guys, not at a table, sitting across from each other. But haikus are fun, and nine is my favorite number.

Two men sit, drinking,
their wine glasses cupped like tea.
There is but silence.

The first examines
his adversary. He is
his Tyler Durden.

Who he wants to be
but can't, due to weakness, and
lack of fashion sense.

This sophisticated
fucker, with his retro garb,
the style of today.

Between the two lies
an empty space, filled with what
they, in fact, call lies.

The adversary
is his own protagonist.
Now he sips his wine.

Confident bastard,
he runs his hand through his hair
and looks at his foe.

What a foe is this!
Erstwhile friend is more like it.
This wine has aged well.

He crosses his legs
and then he says, apropos
of nothing, "Checkmate."

Hey, thanks guys. I suspect addiction soon come. It was really fun to do.

I realized, though, that I didn't actually follow the rules. They weren't actually sitting, so much as there. And not a table but a counter. And not happening all at once, but in memory. But still. Fun. And that's not many words. First draft was twice that length.

SO is thinking about coming out to play.

I definitely have that same reaction, deb, to certain musicians. There are those that make me want to play, and those that make me want to go sit in a dark, dark hole with only my own mediocrity beside me.

Poulter-Cow, that's really nice. Good stuff. I like the 'between them lies' section. It's a concept I've always loved. Dave Matthews' "Space Between" and similar. The intangible but utterly real thing.

Polter, that reminds me a little of 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Very nice.

edit: I'm not really awake yet. All these drabbles are impressive. I joined the community but haven't come up with a thing. I seem to be in visual mode these days.

But how well you are expressing yourself visually--or expressing others, I might should say, since I'm one of the beneficiaries. Still, waiting for words. Liese, you should know I reacted to the words only, since I didn't know you were you at the time. How's that for impartial?

I love Haiku. Can't write them for spit, but I love them.

Polter, that reminds me a little of 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Very nice.

Thanks. I don't know that one. Who's it by?

I love haiku, and can write them, but the ones I write never feel solid to me. My brain seems to want to treat writing them the way it treats writing limericks.

edited because my typing and tenses are all screwy right now.

Liese, you should know I reacted to the words only, since I didn't know you were you at the time. How's that for impartial?

Heh. How it all comes round.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird is by Wallace Stevens, mild-mannered insurance salesman by day, poet by night.

Hm. Interesting. I don't really see the connection, but being compared to Wallace Stevens isn't ungood.

Oh! There was that time the blackbirds got baked into a pie, and you can drink wine with pie. Or something.