Category Archives: Writing

Nothing

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Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

– Gene Fowler

       Nothing. Her desk, a disarray of blue, white, and purple papers, of black, pink, and yellow pens, sat before her. Her keyboard – useless, useless thing – sat in her lap. And she sat, stuck, her mind hopelessly fixated on the vast, all encompassing nothing of her inspiration. The empty, glaring white page on the screen in front of her seemed a fitting image of nothing, she thought. Not that such an image was helpful. 

       She needed to write. She glanced at the blue, hard-backed notepad that sat open on her desk. Read Ch. 7 Lit due tomorrow, crossed off. Read Ch. 5 Ancient History due Fri, crossed off. Do probs. 3, 5, 7-18 Chem. due Thurs., crossed off. Write story due tomorrow. Nothing.  Continue reading →

The Reclaimed

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Dirty, dusty, broken
With rotting beams
And sagging doors
And one cracked shutter
Through which sunlight streams
Into empty rooms with dusty floors,
The house stands silent –
Useless, condemned –
Full of dead, dry leaves
And hanging webs
And nothing stirs the old, stale air
And nothing living moves inside.

And people rarely pause to look,
And few will ever stop to see
The beauty hidden by the shambles
Of what the place was meant to be.

 But He…

He sees past the boarded windows,
The rotting beams and sagging floor,
And underneath the layers of dust
He knows that there lies something more.

He sees the long-lost glory
Of His original design
And He vows, “It shall hold life again,
For I choose this house to be Mine.”

He sets to work that very day,
He opens windows, flings wide doors,
And light streams in on the disarray,
Dances with dust as wind sweeps o’er the floors.

He rips out the rotten and sagging wood,
Builds up the floor, replaces beams.
The grime and dirt don’t trouble Him –
He sees through them to the good He dreams.

And He…

He toils day after day
For weeks that stretch to months and years
And slowly every part reclaims
At cost of sweat and blood and tears.

Finally He stands, surveys with pride
His new creation, complete at last
With hand carved shutters and oaken doors
And clear, bright windows
Where sunlight streams past
Tables and chairs to shining floors.
The house stands quiet –
But silent no more –
For through it its Builder comes and goes,
And He will never allow it
To return to what it was before
For He will always live inside.

The Answer

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She shivered, lying upon her bed,
As the shadows crept over the room,
And she wept in the dark at the ominous tread
She fancied she heard in the gloom.

She trembled, staring straight ahead,
At the figures that over her loomed,
And she sensed with a deep and despairing dread
The form that under her bed lay entombed.

“Why… why must it be dark?” She said.
“Daddy, why won’t You turn on the light?
And why must I stay in this room, in this bed
When the monsters haunt it at night?

“Why, when I lie here,” she desperately pled,
“And the dark hovers over me near
Do I feel, past denying, all the terrors I’ve fled
When You tell me there’s nothing to fear?

“I see and I hear them!  And Daddy, I feel…
I fear to say it, but it’s true…
I can see, hear, and feel them, and they seem so real –
They seem much more real than You.”

At first only silence followed the end
Of the cries of the night-haunted child,
But her Father heard, and quietly listened
As question upon question she piled.

Then out of the dark and shadows of dread
His reply through the blackness came,
And she heard His voice, lying curled on her bed
As quietly He spoke her name.

Though He answered not the questions
The phantoms had stirred up with fear,
He answered her heart when He took her hand
And whispered, “My child, I am here.”