Haunting Strings

Posted bymarialbergPosted inFiction, Photography, poetryTags:, , , , ,
Haunting Strings by Maria L. Berg 2024

OctPoWriMo

Today is Quadrille Monday at dVerse Poets Pub. Lisa challenges us to write a poem of exactly forty-four words that includes the word “string.”

I’m also responding to the prompts in Writober Early Birds

When the Lights Go Out

The void slips through the cracks
Disembodied strings vibrate
a haunting tune
Not unwelcoming

and yet, I shiver

My only fear
is consciousness
both having it
and not having it
once these lungs
cease to consume
and I no longer feel
your calloused touch

Writober Flash Fiction

Kitty Gifts


Marnie thought she had seen the strangest of the little gifts her cat left near her door. She would never forget the claws and tail of a red squirrel or the entire pristine perch without any claw or fang marks. But this morning, when she sucked in the cool morning air on her way to check the mailbox, the dead body in her yard looked like a much larger animal. She couldn’t be sure because it was tucked under a sheet she didn’t recognize. The shape appeared human. And there were numbers strewn around the body as if the crime scene had been processed and many clues were found. And yet, the only sound was the frantic chirping of dark-eyed juncos and wrens in the firs overhead. Frozen in place, she stared at the body, expecting it to roll over, or jump up and yell surprise. She imagined it pulling out its cell phone to capture her shock and post some horrible picture to embarrass her on the internet. Her heart beat faster as her jaw clenched. She hurried back into the house. She wouldn’t be the brunt of a stranger’s joke. The cat brought her three fingers over the next week or so. She stopped going to the mailbox so the fingers were the only way she knew the body was still there. Like all his other gifts, she wondered what her cat thought she would do with them.

Halloween Photography Challenge

The photo at the top of the page, “Haunting Strings” represents the universal fears of separation and extinction. Disembodied sounds in the night of ghostly thieves separating me from beloved instruments. The panoramic glitch in my digital camera separating each slice of the image that it cannot stitch together.

Come back tomorrow to join in all the Writober fun!

Published by marialberg

I am an artist—abstract photographer, fiction writer, and poet—who loves to learn. Experience Writing is where I share my adventures and experiments. Time is precious, and I appreciate that you spend some of your time here, reading and learning along with me. I set up a buy me a coffee account, https://buymeacoffee.com/mariabergw (please copy and paste in your browser) so you can buy me a beverage to support what I do here. It will help a lot.

12 thoughts on “Haunting Strings”

  2. We like this picture by Maria L. Berg. But we can’t see that it makes any sense to write a text with a set number of words.
    Anyway, thanks for sharing
    The Fab Four of Cley
    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Glad you like my photo. I find that writing to a set number of words, or constraints of any kind, can challenge me to make different choices than if I weren’t using the constraint. I may condense and use more specific nouns and verbs. I may choose to use words with multiple meanings to say more in my limited word count. I may get creative with line breaks and spacing to convey more within the limitations. Try it. See how it changes your writing. You might be surprised. I’m so glad you came by and left a comment to start a discussion. I hope you’ll come back often to check out my photos. Why not join the Halloween Photography Challenge and link up some of your own?

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      Reply

      1. Well, as an editor and author I am used to condense texts. It’s the job of an editor to condense texts. But, as my agent always says, write as much as you like and let your editor do the job of shorten texts. In an average a good editor shortens texts by 25 – 30%. But he or she needs something to shorten and an author needs the freedom to express him- or herself without limitations.

        Thanks for your kind answer

        Klausbernd 🙂

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        Reply

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