The word hangs cigarette-smoke grey,

this habit he’s clutched close, coloured

the near-thirty years of my life,

half his life, half the life he lived

before I arrived with my part-

inheritance his mother’s smile.

 

She died of it. His father, too.

Growing up all my father’s jokes

were about not outliving them,

seeing fifty-five, retirement.

Last year they cut a tumour out

from beside his heart: and now this.

 

Can’t change people, or what they do.

My aunt’s voice, my mother’s, bitter

resignation coating their throats.

The sighing familiar tone:

how I love, eating cancerous

into their tolerant tissues.

One of the things I have been keeping quiet about, and that have been keeping me quiet, is that I am trying--after a fallow period of five years and counting--to return to writing original fiction. I have some stories thought out, at various lengths, but nothing really started yet. Hoping to use November to write a couple of short stories, both roughly in the fantasy genre, even though my head is frankly far more taken up with two realist plots. This prioritisation, however, is necessary because I want to apply to the Clarion West summer workshop, and, while they say they will consider any piece of writing, the workshop itself aims to train sff and horror authors, and I will need one of their several scholarships in order to go if I qualify, so best to load the bases. It's not as though I don't quite enjoy writing fantasy. I would like to discuss my stories as and when I go about writing them, so do chime in if you want to be on the appropriate filter.

I also have some notion about the Yuletide assignment, and adore both the requested canon and character, so that ought to be good.

Madmen in from the street
Standing in the pouring rain
In the mud to their ankles
To their calves to their knees
To their ankles in the mud
And the rain pissing down
Piss running down their legs
And windows chorusing shut
To keep out storm and (in)sanity.

Somewhere a witch cackles.
Or maybe it's just a madwoman.

( Hunger )

***

 

( Sleep )