Stolen scent.
Trickling sweat.
Heart thumping; stomach churning.
She smiles.
A searching hand; an encroaching breath.
Lusting.
Expectation.
He smiles.
A hollow cheeked boy sleeps nearby.
Jaundiced eyes full of sorrow; a soul emptying of hope.
Grateful still for a mother’s love.
These 42 words form my entry into this week’s Gargleblaster challenge over at Yeah Write.
Powerful, yet sweet. Nicely done!
Cheers, Wizard.
Love!
Thanks, Jen. A mother’s protective love is the most obvious/unquestioned/unthinking act of nature I could come up with. To me, the mother in this story is as much a heroine as any soldier.
She is! And you captured it so beautifully!
🙂
I agree with you on the mother’s love. The only unconditional love I believe! Very beautiful 🙂
Very nice, Paul. Great pick on the title.
Cheers, Inner.
The hollow-cheeked boy is tugging at my heart…
Dang, my Achilles heel strikes again i.e. a missing hyphen 😦
hahaha. No, no, I have a hyphen addiction and add them unnecessarily. And you don’t want to mess with your word count!
The soul emptying of hope is so sad! Lovely portrait of a mother’s love : )
(Go on, edit in the hyphen. I won’t tell.)
Whoa. This went in an unexpected direction.
Paired with the photo, this is very haunting.
Loved what you did with the prompt. Children often get so trapped and you captured it perfectly.
Marcy used the wording I was going to use. So “ditto” what Marcy said. I read this one several times and then a few more.
Very powerful.
Powerful. The last part says it all.
Thanks, Geeta.
I like your depiction of lust in an unexpected place. Very humanizing.
Cheers!