Glad you liked it, erika. That's what I was going for.

I actually adapted my opposites drabble into a poem, and for the most part I feel it works much better, though the last stanza is not sitting quite right.. anyone feel like taking a peek? I have to read at a launch next week and I thought I'd test it out if it's up to snuff.

blood wine

In the ring, she loses her vision of everything else. Just flesh and space and motion. Sure, she uses aggression to find her impetus, but in the end it's pleasure, not anger, that drives her. Satisfaction, the solidity of the hit. It's all focus, dislocation. Sweat in her eyes, the taste of blood in her mouth.

Later, she is present again, but vision doesn't matter. Body forgotten, the music rises. Emptiness, a base state of being. The other side of focus, a controlled drift, guided by the cantor's voice. The bread, the cup, the taste of blood in her mouth.

I'm sitting here trying to work, and I've got ideas for various stories, some fanfic, some original, playing in my head, and I keep finding myself staring off at nothing as the scenes run. I don't know why my muse works so much better when I'm trying to work than when I'm sitting at home waiting patiently for her to get her act together. Maybe she's really a three-year-old--or a cat--and lives for distracting me when I'm busy and ignoring me when I'm ready to play.

drabble

Our winter coats are a few years old, as are our shoes. Hardly prosperous. The doctor is a recent graduate. He looks at the rash on my husband's hand, studies his calluses and our general air of tiredness.

"This is easy," he says confidently. "It's bipedal-monomanual dermititis." He beams and awaits our awe.

Hubby and I look at each other. "Two-foot," I say.

"One hand," he says.

"Irritated skin?" we say as we look at the doctor.

Doc blinks. "You two know Latin?"

Hubby snorts. "Yes."

"Duh," I say.

Doc excuses himself, Hubby pulls his Scientific American out of his coat pocket, I go back to Ancient Egypt in National Geographic.

wrod.

You've had that doctor too?

Well, sort of, but I meant that more for the distracting muse. And it's worse because I was all hot last week...couldn't have missed. And that is so over now.

Connie, I really like that. I like the contrast of his expectations of you against who you are. The world's got a lot like that, huh, we don't often see the whole person.