Friday Fictioneers: Time Bids Be Gone

Sometimes the eye sees one thing but the heart feels something else. So it was for me with this week’s Friday Fictioneers story. My eye saw the misspelled word, tried to say “Humor.” My heart felt the word that was supposed to be there and ran with it to a place far from the humor of misspelling, a land where a different kind of trespassing was no longer accepted, a land foreshadowed by both the boarded-up openings and the burgeoning plants.

If stretching makes a person flexible, then I’m doing a back bend of epic proportions with this story. But that’s fine. We Fictioneers are a gymnastic team of unbelievable ability when it comes to flexible interpretation. That’s part of the joy of writing.

Copyright Randy Mazie

 Time Bids Be Gone

I pressed the shirt to my nose, noting with a sharp pang that his smell was fading.  Regretfully, I realized some memories were fading as well. The hurt in my heart had lessened from agony to intermittent sadness.  Almost two years now since Christmas had promised to be the best ever. When he’d…just say it, Francesca…he’d died, I’d wanted no more to do with love.  But now I knew I was ready to move on, to let go, to remember without pain.

After New Years, I’d tell Geoff I was ready to try for a new baby.  It was time.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.  ~William Shakespeare

Here’s the link to the rest of the stories. I know the authors would love to have you stop in.

Forgiveness

After several days of helping a friend collect her part of the physical detritus of a shared life prior to moving into a life on her own, I’m also emotionally drained, as both the people are our friends.  I don’t say “were our friends” because singly they remain our friends even though now detached into two separate names rather than two names joined by the small word “and.”

Friday Fictioneers–Lavender Blue

How many years does it take for children’s songs to fade from your brain?  The answer seems to be an infinite number, so choose those songs carefully!  Our girls loved Sharon, Lois, and Bram and one of the songs they sang comes from Burl Ives and before him from folk song history.  It’s called “Lavender Blue” and the lyrics and lovely melody SL&B sang have been in my head all these years.  It inspired the title of this week’s story.

If you’re new to Friday Fictioneers, each week on Wednesday, a number of addicted writers wait with great anticipation for the photo prompt selected by our hostess-with-the-most-ess, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  We then cudgel our brains a/o wait for the muse to strike us (hard), then craft our stories for the week with the best hundred words we can choose.  If you’d like read more stories, click on the little blue guy at the end of my story, sit back, and enjoy. Feel free to “like” and comment too. We writers love interaction with our readers. And if you’d like to join, the door’s always open.

 

copyright Sandra Cook

Lavender Blue

Lavender perfumes the patio where we linger over déjeuner with local wine, basking in the sun, relishing food chosen at the village market.

Once children are gone, it’s time to move on.  We took “move” literally, leaving the town where we’d lived and had a child.  Choosing Provence had been easy, finding the house more difficult. This house attracted us with its quirky sculpture. It remains a now-bearable reminder of the tricycle David was riding when the drunk driver’s car jumped the curb, hitting him as he joyously wheeled along the sidewalk.

Lavender perfumes the urn tucked in the garden.

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Lavender Blue
(Sharon, Lois and Bram)

 Lavender’s blue
Dilly dilly
Lavender’s green
If I were king
Dilly dilly
You’d be my queen

Who told you so
Dilly dilly
Who told you so
I told myself
Dilly dilly
I told me so