Friday, May 28, 2010

Writing Exercise #1

All prompts come from www.about.com

Prompt #1:  Describe a landscape as seen by an old woman whose horrible old husband has just died.  Do not mention the husband or death.

Only for the slightest moment did the sunshine on my bare forearms feel cold or the wind rustling in the trees seem to whisper cruel words from the life I had just escaped after 49 years.  I left the stark room and garish beeps and clicks, ignoring the pleas of my daughter to stay.  What had she ever known but the cotton-candy perfection that he created to hide the rot?  No, I wouldn’t stay a captive one moment longer; Freedom, such a foreign concept, it stole across my mind like summer fog that cools the hateful heat.  Breath passed my lips in a wondering sigh, the blood quickened in my veins.  I am alive and excited.  I have a new lease on life at 73 years.  The glittering sun winked at me from a periwinkle sky, and I continued on down the road, leaving behind a past that I loathed, spitting it out of my life like chewed gum that lost its flavor.
Let a man consider that God is always looking at him from heaven, that his actions are everywhere visible to the divine eyes and are constantly being reported to God by the Angels.
-- St Benedict's Rule of Order, on Humility