Title: Les Fleurs Violettes
Assignment: Had to relate somehow to the book we were reading Wasurenagusa (read it!).
Award: Most French
Length: 1169
Summary: A short story in French about a man returning to the orphanage where he spent his childhood.
Notes: The first two lines taken from 'Un Singe En Hiver' by Indochine. Please forgive my French, I wrote this a year ago.

( I came back to Vietnam this morning... )

Belgium (Richness & Destitution)
"Chocolate - Cote d'Or"
Slivers shave off around my teeth -
it's dark and heavy, an
      effort
to snap, bitter and cool in hands, bitter and warm
in mouth. So much within.
This tastes like luxury.
     Belgian mornings, dark Belgian histories,
     dark Belgian secrets.
Congo drums beat on my tongues
     as I remember
                                        

The walls were crumbling under the sunlight and she lay there, lines of persperation on her lip and collarbone, ready to be flecked with sand and hold dust in the hollows of her skin. Her hair was curling in the heat. The distant explosion, one more explosion of violence, one more death, didn't wake her; his intake of breath did. She didn't stir, just opened her catlike lashes to see him, the smile of sleep still warmly frozen there, now with the gently purpose of thought behind it. His boot crunched a rock, a noise that seemed more deafening than the gunshots outside, echoing within the room like a Christmas cracker. "Andy? What's the matter?" she said, though she didn't sit up. She just lay there, brow crinkling, no dust in the lines yet, although it was only a matter of time.
      He found a way to say it without choking by staring through the window that was really a hole left by a bomb or a car or some other tragedy of existence, staring at the sky that was on fire. "How can you be so - peaceful?" He said. All the happy people who had never been happy or people had already left, if they had ever been here. "Here."
      He only felt like he was sleeping when he was wide awake, the nightmare spread out like hell before him, a real hell, a worser hell than could be imagined because there wasn't any escape from it. That was the only time he could close his eyes, the only time he wanted to.
      He tore his gaze away from the sky burning with precious metals to watch her throat as she gathered saliva, thinking about it. "Because I'm alive," she said, and he thought of how utterly hopeless that was, the living. It was supposed to be a consolation, one saving grace, and he could never quite muster the strength to be grateful enough. "I'm living." She tasted it.
      "I have oxygen." Her eyes moved to the window.
      "I have my own two hands," she whispered.
      "And I do have hope." A beat.
      "I can read." Two beats.
      She moved her eyes to him, and he hadn't blinked, and she couldn't stop. "I have you here. That's why - I wouldn't call it... content. I wouldn't say that." She spoke brokenly, and he walked towards the bed, feet cracking like firecrackers to cover another burst of gunfire. "But I suppose peace makes sense."
      She still hadn't moved, her body frozen in its warm position of comfortable softness. He sat on the bed beside her, springs creaking the scream of terror he couldn't put words to, sheets dry and rustling. "But is that enough?" He spoke, not meaning to and not entirely knowing he had.
      She rolled her head back to look at the ceiling. "I have a purpose," she whispered.
      "I have someone I trust. And isn't that something," she marvelled at the last four words. "And isn't that enough."
     In the pause there was more silence than there had ever been in the whole world. It lasted an eternity as he drank her in and she lay back, eyes open and trying to put the world back together. "So this is what an epiphany feels like," she said, speaking not to Andy but to the man in the moon-shaped stain on the ceiling. "I always wondered."
      Her head slid back to look at Anderson, who had his fingers now wrapped gently around the wrist of her curled and oustretched hand. She looked at it. "Anderson," she whispered. "I can feel my heartbeat."
      "So can I," he whispered back, the dying, suffering light falling through the room, through the walls and sun and bones because the air was too full of dirt and guns and grief to hold it all. It split the room, more full of life and silent, violent commotion than he'd ever thought something could be. A single tear fell to land in the middle of her small palm, one lonely tear to join the whispers and sand in her veins.
      She spoke softly when she said, "I think that's the most precious gift anyone's ever given me."
      And then she closed her eyes again, her blood thrumming against his hand, eyelashes still soft and black, and he didn't feel peace, but light.

Curtain of hair falls
     - crooked and frizzy over one ear -
But smooth nonetheless math test
     below
Itch on the lip, clock tick
     once
A perfect
     square.

----------------------

Curtain of hair falls
     - red and dusty velvet velour -
Skims the boards actors pace the
     wings
Muttered lines, stage shines and
     dims
Break a
     leg.

---------------------

Curtain of hair falls
     (from the grubby pony-tail)
Loose tendril as she climbs
      waterfalls.
Rough grey rock, red tank top
     sweats
Out of           Amost
     reach           there.

Title: The Thing
Assignment: The Power of Words
Awards: Saddest
Length: 549
Summary: I visited my great-aunt, who has been struck by ALS. I play her piano, eat her bread, and am severly disturbed by her talking typewriter. And no, that is not a joke.
A/N: It was kind of hard for me to be flippant in this piece, but I had to give it a bit of brevity.
OCH Rating: 7

Title: On Bended Knee
Assignment: Photo
Awards: Most Pantomiming
Length: 506
Summary: Second day in Belgium. I get wet. I go for a walk. There is a misunderstanding of languages.
A/N: I have... nothing to say. Warning: large photo under the cut
OCH Rating: 7


 

Title: The Price is Right
Assignment: My Little Obsession
Awards: Least Likely To Be Shown To My Boss
Length: 618
Summary: You know what pisses me off? Gift receipt-whores. I don't care how much you paid for my present, lady. I'm just glad you got me one.
A/N: I made the teacher laugh. I was happy. This was adapted from an old LJ post. Shhhh....
OCH Rating: 8

Title: Trivial Pursuit
Assignment: Loser Me
Awards: Most Relatable
Length: 882
Summary: I lose things. And forget things. A lot. I'm one of those kids who lose mittens, forget homework, and "don't hear" my mom when she calls me to dinner. But some things I'm good at retaining...
A/N: "Galahad" has to be THE most common answer on crossword puzzles and in trivia games. I can't count the number of times I've read "Who is Lancelot's son?"
OCH Rating: 9

Title: Borders
Assignment: First Day/Time (First Kiss, First Day of Grade 9, First...)
Awards: Most indecisive
Length: 465 words
Summary: My hellish first day in Belgium, and how it improved.
A/N: This was the first piece I wrote for the class, and I think it's reflected. It's also very short, because he wanted one page.
OCH Rating: 6/7 But only because it was my first, and compared to the others.
 

I am going to be posting most of what I wrote in my Writer's Craft class last semester, now it's all polished and edited and in one place. Most of them are personal essay-style, but some of them aren't. Unfortunately, I have submitted some to scholarships with "do not publish, even on the web, THIS MEANS YOU," and as I have a fear of authority I shan't be putting them up. Now, since they're scholarship pieces they are kind of the best ones - or not, since what I'm most proud of isn't necessarily what other people like. They're all fairly short, except for this one... of course. Anyways, enjoy! Concrit welcome, though God knows how many times I and others have picked over these peices. I have given each of them an OCH Rating (refering to an amatuer Scottish editor I know with those initials)

Title: Mrs Buchanan's Inheritance
Assignment: Another Time, Another Place (insert something modern into something old, or vice versa)
Length: 2500 exactly
Awards: Longest Piece In The Class, All Semester. Was submitted to the CBC Literary Awards, did not win therefore I can stick it all over the place.
Summary: When Mrs Buchanan's sister passes away, she is left with a post peculiar item. She is visited by a strange knight from afar, eats a tomato sandwich, and has to deal with the next-door-neighbour's daughter.
A/N: Props if you can list all the Arthurian details I stuck in there. Inspired by Neil Gaiman's short story Chivalry.
OCH Rating: 10. What. I really like it.

Below is my entry to the Answers.com Creative Writing Challenge, entitled either 'Scars' or 'Thursday'.

OK guys. This is the FIRST THING that I have written purely for my enjoyment that I have EVER finished. I wrote it at lunch, on spares, during Reading Period, sometimes during English class. I edited, I rewrote, I reread.
It isn't exactly a story: hence, no real plot. No action, since people aren't leaping out of helicopters or performing the Heimlich. It's more of a... portrait, I guess. Of a person.
All names (like that of the narrator) are incidental (she is not meant to be me). There aren't any quotation marks, so have fun with that, and...

Oh, what the hell. Stop talking, self. *facepalm* This thing means a lot to me. It also has no title. <3