Tinies no. 1

I have discovered that having to read 316 books (I am on 190 right now, this very minute--just glanced away) in a short period of time is a good way to put a stop to my own writing. So I'm noodling about a bit, writing some Tinies that are related but maybe not going anywhere, maybe not prose poems, maybe not stories, maybe just seedlets blown like parachutes by the wind. Here's the first one.

KIDNAPPED

They took me. I was small and hardly remember, but there are seven of us who speak the old language in this place, and one who remembers--Old Martin, who was taken another way (by a greenish, glowing jellyfish that hovered in the sky, catching him in its tentacles and drawing him upward, or so he says when he doesn’t say “a machine of lights.” Or when he doesn't tell some other story entirely.) I love Old Martin because he taught me in secret the letters to write down what comes into my mind, what I see, what little I remember. 

And what was that?

Recollection is a meadow with dark blue flowers and red poppies, the feel of a hand curling around mine. It is a voice flaring in the dark, a shell cupped against my ear, a way that led into a tree: I felt the living braille of bark under my fingertips that said Open, and my hand drifted to the burnished knob. The gold against my skin tugged at me, sang at me, and called for me to twist, press, lean… 

I walked in. 

2 July 2012