I've not written poetry for anybody else's eyes since high school...it's the Music of Pain for me...I do it in private when life really sucks. Shy about that...yikes.

No pressure, though, erika. If we go by Steph's description (as ita kindly directed me to), then you would never have to submit a poem.

They can be sources of enormous vulnerability, no doubt.

It's not a novel in my head. It's an action movie.

I thought you were referring to Kristin's proposed story, and my eyes almost popped out.

Here's a poem, to make Kristin happy. On the other theme of the week, keys.

Locks

I'm going, she tells him. I've had enough.

Fine. Go right ahead. I don't give a damn.

They've played this out before, three times, five times.
It's a thing, everyone tells them; married less than five years
And everthing is drama
Everything is intense
Everything is fabulous! Terrible! World-ending!

Go, the older people say, fight now; later
There will be children, money, precious sleep,
Sex to be taken in snatches, intimacy
As rare as a night out together.

Have your dramas now. Enjoy.

She grabs for the car keys, not knowing
Whether to laugh
Whether to cry
Whether to go.

Oh Deb, I love the repetition in the last three lines as well as the complete honesty about a growing marriage.

Wonderful!

I had forgotten about the keys altenate topic. I love old keys.

Hmm.

Yeep - just looked at the time.

Off to writers group. Must. Calm. DOWN.

Kristin's piece was really powerful, and I'd certainly be interested in reading a novel with ita's drabble in it.

This is too long to be a drabble, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. It's my first take at the last scene of the mystery novel that I seem to be mostly not writing. I know this is backwards, but the last scene was actually the beginning of the story idea.

Kate placed one of the brown bottles on the newly turned clay and opened the other, using the edge of her tee shirt to grip the cap to twist it off. She winced at the taste, but felt the alcohol start to cut the dull hangover headache and still the shaking in her hands. Something glinted in the red clods, and she picked it up. It was sharp fragment of quartz, with no sign of human shaping.

Her feet still hurt, and she sat down and leaned against the oak tree that shaded the family plot. She pulled the plaque out of the plastic bag. "Look at what I got, Anna. The Cracker Jack prize." She downed the last of the beer and leaned over to pick up the other bottle. She opened it and poured it on the dirt, then started to get up. There was a hole under the exposed roots. She heard Anna's voice. "Intrusion. That's something works its way down into older strata, so that bits of World War II airplanes end up with Etruscan pottery." Kate worked the bottle into the hole and heard it fall. She imagined future archeologists, sifting the clay, picking out the brown fragments. She brushed the dirt off her jeans and headed back to the truck.

I love the imagery in that piece, Ginger. The last two sentences are especially powerful.

I'm confused by the "Intrusion..." quote, but that's probably because this is taken from the end of a story.

There are, hypothetically, earlier scenes in which Anna is explaining archaelogy to Kate. With intrusion, something appears to be older than it really is because it's in strata with older things. As is probably obvious, Anna is killed because of something she discovers.

Can I cheat and post another fruit-themed poem since I didn't realize drabbles were open-format?

I'm taking the silence in this nice little posting box as enthusiastic support for this idea.

Here it is:

Grapes

I am trapped by a memory--
hands slipping across my body,
peeling off resistance
like the fragile skin of fruit.

I am raw remembering it,
shivering without my skin;
naked as a newborn.

Old grapes grow to wine.
Your memory is like that;
intoxicating, sweet, bitter.

Edited to fix line breaks