Imprint

From an old photograph, with "Lausanne 1939" on the back, she stares up at me.

Christ, she's gorgeous. Blue-black curls, huge eyes, cheekbones, but more than that? She's loving it. Unlike me, she has beautiful arms; one hand's on an out-thrust hip, one perfect leg teases the photographer: probably my father.

She's an icon of arrogant sexuality. She looks more like the me I've known all these years, than the she I knew all those years.

I wonder what, in the weight of time, could have twisted this confident siren into the cold bitter woman I never wanted to know.

Deb, ouch. That drabble stings.

I'm putting the finishing touches on the revision. It will be insent shortly.

Looking at that picture of my mother is a genuine viscero-emotional disconnect. I look more like her than any of the other kids, and I can hardly stand to look at it. It terrifies me. What happened to her?

I'm here, and drying off before we head south, and will open as soon as it gets here.

Pictures of my mom and me at about age 12 could be the same person, in different clothes. As adults, the resemblance is definite, mind you, but not doppleganger.

erika, the change in her wasn't so much physical as it was emtionally and spiritually profound. It wasn't so much that the girl in the photograph was pretty, or vibrant, or the usual stuff; it was that she was someone else entirely. She was eyefucking the photographer like a hot date; the picture oozes pure sexuality. She flaunted it. It was fucking beautiful.

And I have no idea who that girl was. The woman I knew was cold, distant, shuttered, physically occasionally violent, and very unstable.

Deb, she could make lightbulbs shatter, couldn't she?

Deb, insent.

Deb, she could make lightbulbs shatter, couldn't she?

And books pop off shelves. She remains the only evidence of telekinesis I've ever come across; when she got genuinely angry, lightbulbs would pop, all across the house. She also had the habit of phoning up her children and telling them what they were wearing; with me, at least, she never missed, even at a distance of several thousand miles.

She was genuinely freaky. I wonder what she was like when that photograph was taken. I hope I don't end up as unstable as she was. Of course, in astrological terms, she was bizarro wet dream anyway: six planets in Pisces and a leap year 29 February baby.

And Kristin, backsent, with major kudos.

Squeaking in under the wire... I love what everyone has done with this topic. It's a powerful one, all right.

Challenge #33: The Passage of Time

The day crawled. Huge, hollow hours stretched out with only the smallest tasks to fill them—trying on my dress, calling the bakery, checking with the florist.

Napping was out of the question. I was one great jangling nerve, pacing and tapping and flipping the pages of an out-of-date magazine with cheerful violence, as if I could move the clock hands through sheer will.

But when the time came, the ceremony warped into a mere blur of words and music and the heavy scent of roses, so brief I remember only the warm, solid weight of Stephen’s hand in mine.