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Post 1441. Sunday February 5

The Sunday Whirl and Sunday's Whirligig

I can still see myself standing in that neglected cemetery deep in the countryside. Weatherworn gravestones poked from the tangled undergrowth, reaching for the gathering storm clouds overhead. A chill wind sent a flurry of rotten brown leaves twisting and swirling twixt the crooked monuments. It seemed they once buried the bodies of soldiers there, those that hadn’t survived the ravages of war. Row upon row.  

An old woman knelt before an overgrown grave. I watched as she traced the carved letters; I shuddered as her fingernails scratched green moss from the cold grey stone. Her fingertips bled, but she appeared to feel no pain. A priest appeared at her side, his black robe billowing in the breeze; he clutched a handful of fluttering papers from which he mumbled a prayer. He crossed himself and wandered away. I sat alongside her and placed my arm on her heaving shoulders. She gazed into my eyes and mouthed thank you, then gave me a withered flower. The sun broke free and a hummingbird hovered above us. It sang. We smiled. I fell asleep.

I must have slept for hours. I was indoors, the dying embers of my log fire glowing in the grate. It had all been a dream.

Then I saw the withered flower on the rug at my feet.

 

The given words at The Sunday Whirl are stone, dreamed, bled, carved, body, brown, prayers, papers, fingernails, doors, fire and soldiers.

At Sunday’s Whirligig, we have poking, pain, proper, hummingbirds, heavy, heard, country, compare, can, survive, sky and storm.

Of the twenty-four words, I employed twenty-two.

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