Tags
angst, books, fiction, forest, lonely, photography, picture it and write, poetry, psychology, talk to the hand, teenager, writing
I urge people to join in, comment with your paragraph of fiction to accompany the image. It doesn’t have to follow my story or reflect the same themes. It can be a poem or in a different language (provide a translation please :)). Anyone who wants to join in, is welcome. This photograph has been reblogged under Ermisenda on tumblr.
Tears streamed down my face, I didn’t wipe them away. I could still hear the incessant bickering between my parents. Plates broke and glasses shattered. When their furious eyes turned to me, I left. The gloomy woods scratched my skin as I forced myself into it’s frigid embrace. Anywhere was better than home. “He’s your son!” The screech of my step mother echoed amongst the trees. I tripped and fell. My blurred gaze rose, I saw someone. It was her: the girl. The light illuminated her but shadowed me. I wanted some of that light, the light she took from me. “Do you hear him at night? He talks to himself.” I tried to force my step mother’s voice out from my mind but it only grew stronger. I rose. The girl stared at me and blinked slowly. My hand reached out to touch her, to take back what was mine. The chilling air bit at my fingers. “Please,” I begged. “You’re all I have.” The girl smiled. The voice of my step mother maliciously hissed from the foliage beneath our feet. “Schizophrenic.”
– Ermisenda Alvarez
EDIT: I was feeling artsy and designed a button for Picture it & write. Everyone is welcome to use them, just link them back to the Picture it & write category or Ermiliablog! 🙂 If you need one in black and white or of a different size dimension just let me know and I’ll fix it up for you. I’ve left the HTML code down below.
<a href=”http://bit.ly/vRzLNZ”_blank”><img src=”http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n320/LadySerendipity/pictureitandwrite2copy-1.png” border=”0″ alt=”Photobucket”></a>
Ermilia 
My parents are getting divorced because my mom thinks my dad was running around on her. I don’t think he was but it sure looks like he was. He works late at the church a lot but doesn’t always tell us what he is doing. I know that he counsels people and must keep that confidential but a beautiful woman was seen in his office. My father, the pastor, was hugging her. It may have been innocent but now everyone is talking about it. When we go to church, I can hear the whispers as we walk to our pew. I look around at the people and feel a desire to hide under my pew rather than sit in it. “How does father manage to still get up in front of all of these people?” I spot the woman that was in his office. “What is she doing here?” I sneak a glance at the door and imagine myself escaping. I notice that mom has now seen the woman too. “What is she doing here?” The sound of my mom’s voice interrupts the soft voices. Heads turn to face us. I raise my hand to block the stares….
I liked how much story was packed into this one paragraph. Great work! The repetition of ‘What is she doing here?’ was great, it turned the curious question into a judgmental one. The description of attempting to ‘block the stares’ is beautiful as well. If only it was that easy to do so. Thanks for contributing!
I loved the lead in!! It gave me several ideas on what to do with it but I opted for the total change of pace. Hope you like it – I threw Mark completely for a loop with this one, lol. Blessings, Terri
Wow this just pushes me to the limit. Waiting for the broken plates to hit the pulpit! My father the pastor in an affair at church. If I didn’t have an even crazier real life story that was worse than that, I would be outraged, but I do. And just like that Penn State scandal, like everyone in the whole church just turns their back to it. Even the priest, who knows all about it. You are braver than I am, Rainbow! ♥
Just a quick note, read 4 of these so far and I gotta say, this pic… kinda says “Get your phone out my face.” I won’t be writing that, but that’s what the pic says.
It does look like a “Get your phone out of my face” piece. But that’s why we have so many great minds to contribue with their works. Hopefully we’ll have different stories to tell! 🙂
(To be honest *blushes* I am a little confused by your first paragraph, are you speaking about your own life experiences? Who’s Rainbow?)
Rainbow meant rainbowheartlove.
Okay guys, this is my first attempt at writing a story line instead of a poem – hope you like it!
http://terri0729.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/she-wants-to-feed/
Thanks for contributing every week Terri, we really appreciate it. 🙂 I didn’t expect a short story rather than a poem, but it was a good choice (we all need to mix-it-up sometimes). I thought you added a chilling extension. I really liked this sentence ‘Everything within me was poised to escape except my will and it was forcing me to stand still.’ I hope to see more of your multi-talented self again next week. 😀
Thanks so much! I couldn’t help but continue the story. I’ve done 2 parts so far and working on part three 🙂 When you get a chance stop by and check them out. Let me know what you think, but be gentle with me since this is my first story, lol! Blessings, Terri
Extended my hand and reached out
Hoping to find something to hold onto
Yet everywhere my hand went
I felt a cold smoothness underneath
Like a piece of glass
Had trapped me
And had become
A part of me.
Oooh Eliza, I really liked this one! It gave me shivers just picturing how that would feel to be talking to someone who wasn’t there and know it for the first time. Great job! Blessings, Terri
A lovely, haunting poem. I liked the idea of adding the sensation of cold glass and being trapped within it. Great concept. This was another really good contribution. Thanks Eliza for stopping by this week and I hope to see you again soon! 🙂
I wasn’t going to comment on this, but I changed my mind. I totally feel like a sample on a slide plate after this poem is done now, which is pretty cool. I didn’t see it at first but if you put your hand up to protect against a cover slip… ooh!
“Okay, open your eyes,” Brandon said. I obeyed, and what a sight it was. There were beautiful pine trees everywhere, lush and green. It was so peaceful. I felt like we were in another world, a world that belonged only to us. I grinned and turned to face him, only to see that he had already brought out the camera. I groaned and covered my face with my hand. He laughed and took the picture anyway.
Haha, I should have refreshed before I posted! This one is going to be hard to top for me, better than mine for sure. I admit I’m a sucker for Brandons, but this is a perfect “Get your phone out my face.” Love it, Agent! ♥
Aw that’s so sweet 😀
Very cute! It really felt like you just took a snippet of someone’s life and wrote it down. Nothing too drastic (plotwise) occurs. It’s a cute, authentic piece. Thanks for contributing with your lovely work. I hope to see more in the near future. 🙂
Thanks everyone! 😀
I guess I’ll just add my awww to everybody else’s comments, lol! Nice take. Blessings, Terri
Just one more shoutout to Ermi and Elia. This is such a GREAT idea!
Thank you thank you. *bows* 😀 I know it’s cheesy but… it wouldn’t be Picture it & write without you guys and your great contributions! It’s true. 🙂
I forgot to compliment your story and mention how intriguing the schizophrenia was. It would be a lot of fun to expand on that. Draw out two distinctly different characters in a dialogue and have the whole thing in his head.
Thank you. 🙂 Schizophrenia is very intriguing. I have a story that I am trying to write for NaNo that involves someone diagnosed with it. Unfortunately my exams keep halting my momentum forward. I think I’ll have my NaNo in December. 😀
Hij staat en kijkt naar het vuur.
Naast hem ligt de enige band
die over is van het brandende wrak
Sirenes in de verte laten hem weten
Dat hij niet meer alleen is.
Als hij uitreikt naar de hand
die naar hem uitrekt
verstommen de sirenes
en danst zijn ziel op het vuur.
—
He stands and looks at the fire.
Next to him lays the only tyre,
left of the burning wreckage.
Sirens in the distance tell him
that he is not alone anymore.
When he reaches for the hand
that is reaching for him
the sirens go on mute
and his soul dances on the fire.
– Otheus
This was a great touch ‘Sirens in the distance tell him, that he is not alone anymore.’ Lovely poem! I like that you saw a disaster occurring in the image. It could very well have been, we don’t know! Thanks for stopping by and contributing Otheus.
I love that these are written in Dutch and yet still come off so well in English.
Wow, very soulful!! Nicely done. Blessings, Terri
Schizophrenic… No, is impossible. I know you are real, you have to be real…
We need to talk, she said.
She came close to me and whisper in my ear…
Cool! I really liked that little addition. Blessings, Terri
Thanks for contributing this little piece. I really liked the idea of her coming close to his ear, whispering. It was haunting. Vuelve pronto! 🙂
Gracias Ermilia, así lo haré.
Saludos!
I didn’t forget you. Here’s Five Good Reasons.
Yay, another contribution! I liked how you really took advantage of the hand, the gestures it could be making. I thought it was cheeky and clever to re-enforce it at the end. I feel like this should be part of a grand story. You are really good at using dialogue (it seems easy but sadly many authors struggle with appropriate/authentic dialogue). Thanks for contributing and being so active on our Picture it & write posts (among others!).
Yay for cheeky! A lot of what I write is fictional autobiography that reuses the same set of characters. In that sense, it is part of a grand story. I’m working on improving dialog so thank you very much for that!
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Hey I wrote a rather long response to this post so I did it in a post on my blog here:
http://evilnymphstuff.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/master-it-or-die/
Enjoy! 🙂
Wow! I loved the twist. That was a great contribution. I thought you executed this really well ‘She stared at me with the same blue eyes as mine, and simply said: “No.”‘. Very powerful. Thanks for swinging by! 🙂
Here is my entry! I hope you enjoy.
Link: http://airickaphoenix.com/Author/?p=597
Teaser: […]Jacob wasn’t a believer of things unanswerable. All things had answers; all things had a scientific explanation. But Angie had none of those things.[…]
Thank you so much for the continuous inspiration! You help keep my muse happy, thus keeping me happy! lol.
Best wishes.
Another great story! You have a knack for creating enjoyable bite size fiction. The characters had great development, I loved Jacob. This was a beautiful description ‘The cliffs overlooked a wide stretch of ocean, now churning with an impending storm. The sky in the distance was a murky gray, bleeding into the red and orange.’ I hope to see you next week, I can’t wait!
Thank you so much! You always say the sweetest things, and I am delighted that you enjoyed this piece half as much as I enjoyed reading your entry. It was just beautifully delight, as always. You are truly an inspiration. This round’s teaser was just chilling and suspenseful. My heart went out to him. Thank you for sharing.
Good thing I wasn’t up there instead of Jake. Angie had me talked into it! Another fun read!
LMAO! Good thing Jacob was so rational, eh? lol. Glad you enjoyed the story. Thank you so much for reading! 😀
What can i say, besides wow? 🙂
Stop!
Wait!
Don’t go yet!
I’m afraid if you leave now
you will
never
come back.
Hey Aurora! I am a massive fan of short poems. This was great. Slicing up ‘you will never come back’ was beautiful. It sounded like disjointed sobs when I read it. Maybe that wasn’t the effect you were going for… either way: awesome work! 😀 Thanks for stopping by and adding to the growing pool of contributions.
’twas fun 🙂 Thanks for getting I was the child in the photo. See you again soon. Love all the great writing your prompts “prompt” 🙂
Excellent! Blessings, Terri
I totally got an image with this. I wanted to read the words fanned out, printed on the fingers of the picture.
“I am not your friend”.
That is the kind of reaction that I got all the time at school. I was probably the only person in the whole school with my ‘disability’ – even though the SEN teachers were fab at trying to make groups and stuff to help me make friends, it just…. didn’t.
I hated being the odd one out, having to stuggle with coming to terms with the fact that I hated the fact that i found it hard to make friends, yet I was also a normal teen who loved music and was starting an interest in shopping and watching Friday night comedy on BBC 2!!
I just want to be like the rest of you. But, because you can’t accept me, you’re just showing that hand.
That makes me sad.
http://andsuddenlyisee.wordpress.com / http://wordshakermag.wordpress.com
Yay, so many contributors this week! This is so sad. I want to be the one who accepts you. 😦
Thanks for contributing this week. You wrote a good internal monologue piece. They can be hard to write. I think starting with a piece of dialogue is always a great, strong choice. I hope to see more from you on future Picture it & write posts soon!
“Stop looking at me!” I screamed, only I kept it inside. They all thought they knew what I had done. The problem was, I hadn’t. My cousin had killed her, not me. Besides, no one was sad about Mrs. Smith’s demise. All the kids in the neighborhood had hated her because she yelled at us for picking her flowers. The grown-ups hated her because she complained incessantly. Anyway, my cousin Otto’s dad whipped him for stealing flowers, so Otto killed her to get even. I was there, but I didn’t know what he was going to do until it was too late. So stop looking at me.
Sorry for it being so grim–I’m writing a murder mystery for NaNoWriMo and I think it bled over a little!
http://bunnyonthebed.com/
Great job! I liked it anyway. Mine is along the sinister lines too. I guess great minds think alike, lol! Blessings, Terri
Nothing wrong with grim… we all bleed over from our personal stuff. Good job!
Grim = <3. 😀 I really liked it! There was so much backstory, it would have been nice to see the characters evolve. I thought it was really powerful how you opened and closed the short piece with 'Stop looking at me'. We'll be waiting for another contribution from you soon (Every Sunday we release new Picture it & write prompts). Great work!
Anyone who already posted this week and hasn’t seen the addition to the bottom of the post, we now have a grabbable button for you wonderful contributors. Also Ermi’s handiwork.
-Elia
I saw this last night and proudly made it my page’s first button. 🙂
So, this might totally suck as a question, but how do I grab? Just right click, Save As? Or is there some super special way, like an HTML link bar?
The code is underneath the button. If that’s not a helpful answer, you’ll have to wait for Ermi to come online and she’ll tell you how. 🙂
I just added an Image widget to my page with the Image URL set to the one up above and the Link URL being the Ermilia home.
Okay! Sorry, I had a busy day (University exam, Boooo!). 😀 I have uploaded a graphic just to suit black background blogs (I noticed my image wouldn’t work on yours since it’s transparent with black writing). It’s got white text instead. Either use HTML if you’re comfortable with that or you can create a new image widget as Anne suggested.
(Step by Step incase you’re not sure)
1. Open up Dashboard in WordPress.
2. Scroll down to the option ‘Appearance’
3. From that drop down bar choose Widgets.
4. Drag the ‘Image’ bar from the ‘Available Widgets’ and drag it into you ‘Sidebar Widget’. (That’s indicating where the image chosen, e.g. Picture it & write graphic, will be located.)
5. Click the image arrow and expand the box.
6. Enter one of these Urls for the image
WHITE TEXT ideal for black/dark background: http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n320/LadySerendipity/pictureitandwrite1whitecopy.gif
BLACK TEXT ideal for white/light background: http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n320/LadySerendipity/pictureitandwrite1-1.png
7. Enter this short url for link Url = http://bit.ly/vRzLNZ
8. Save and close
9. Refresh your blog and check. 🙂
Any more questions? Was that too much? I hope I helped you out. 🙂 Thanks for showing enthusiasm towards my little button! 😀
You guys are awesome! Thank you for such a thorough and thoughtful hand, except, my wordpress is stupid and doesn’t have the image button under widgets. *sigh* I’m going to try a few other ways to make this button a part of my webpage! lol.
Thank you again!
That’s really strange… I hope you manage one way or the other. 🙂 It’s always a pleasure to help wherever I can.
That is such a good idea!! My blog looks so much better with that button!! Thanks!
5. The answer to the universe.
When a child of twelve, who has never spoken a word in his life, says clear as day, “Five.” The world stops for a moment.
It’s as though, someone just threw a huge wrench on the floor in the middle of a crowded room. A foreign object. Tangible, yet not belonging to its environment. Everyone wants to touch it and move it around, yet the only real response is gasps and jaws dropping.
You expect the clouds to break, and for sunshine to come streaming through the window illuminating this freckled blonde boys hair. You think somehow, some deity is speaking through him.
Then you see his eyes. He looks as shocked as you. His eyes seem to instantly withdraw, and you can see his spirit shrink away, wishing to be invisible.
But just before he runs out of this crowded place to find a place to breathe, he looks you in the eye….
…and you know.
Five! I love it!
Wow that was so different. Great work! I love everyone’s differing interpretations. It makes this exercise such a delight. I found this part really powerful ‘A foreign object. Tangible, yet not belonging to its environment. Everyone wants to touch it and move it around’. Thank you for coming by and sharing your original work. I hope to see you in the future!
You drew heart-shaped kisses on the ridges of my bones
Where they softened and seized, simultaneously.
The world became shades – my favourite navy and blue
While I melted into the blur, in chorus.
(I did not reach – but how I wanted!)
Softened and seized, spun into mute
I called the light to sew rivulets to my cuffs and my throat
Where they would glisten and never slip away.
It’s always a pleasure to read your poetry daisyhead. I thought this part was fantastic ‘I called the light to sew rivulets to my cuffs and my throat/Where they would glisten and never slip away.’ I wasn’t quite sure what rivulets was but I looked it up (hehe). A delicate, moving and eloquent poem. I hope to see more contributions from you in the future! 🙂
Lovely concept … here’s my contribution
Reaching,
ever reaching
for something
just outside my grasp
Knowing
down deep
that it’s
something I must keep
Dear and close
to my heart
for it is ever
a part
Of my constant war
on this life
so full of strife
and pain
And here
I find myself
again and again
Reaching
for that thing
that will keep
me whole
The barrier
that protects
my soul
Unique to me,
defining me
grasping tight
to my
self-control
Hey there! Thanks for swinging by and leaving a poem for us. I really liked the concept of trying to grasp your self-control. The rhythm of this stanza was lovely ‘Dear and close/to my heart/for it is ever/a part. I hope to see more from you in the future! It’s always great to see a new face. 🙂
My eyes dart back and forth
Feeding on frenzies
Livid creatures scream at me.
I’m nothing but a ghost
He’s nothing but a dream.
I wreak havoc on Earth
I whistle and turn
I’m living and dying
Broken in pieces.
I reach out my hand
I see two, I see four
I see a shadow.
You see me.
I am you
You are me.
This is everything
We will ever be.
Growing out of nothing
Starting and stopping and
Bending to nothing to
Everything as well as the art
The heart of a student
Help me, my lover
Help me, my friend
Help me, I’m more
Than just mentally damned.
Help me, I love you
Help me, my father
Help me, for I am gone
Help me, for I am mad.
You
Are
Mad.
Wow! That was mesmerising. I felt like I was whirling downwards, getting faster and faster with every new sentence. The crashing, overwhelming end to your poem was stunning. ‘You/Are/Mad.’ I also loved this bit ‘Help me, I’m more/Than just mentally damned.’ Fantastic, you took me on an exhilarating poetry ride. Thank you! I hope to see more in the future (yay for poetry rides! :))
Thanks 🙂 I’m rather fond of the way it all just comes to a screeching halt with the You/Are/Mad part as well.
❤ Thanks for the prompt.
– D (The Sunday Mail)
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Hi, mine is quite long so here is a link to the post on my blog, hope you enjoy it (:
http://wordsformwindows.com/2012/01/29/920/
Hey there, Daniel. Your story’s opening ‘“I said get the camera out of my face,” the forest screamed around him, the leaves rustling so loud, deafening.’ was so strong. I loved it. It set the mood perfectly for the rest of your story. Very dark and depressing. Thanks for contributing to Picture it & write!