The mind has many defences, she wrote
in her award-winning essay. Glowing,
she stood in front of her school;
movie tickets her prize.
Painted in shades between girl and woman
she kissed me goodbye with bright red lips
and joined her friends in line.
The mind has many defences, she wrote.
Maybe that’s why, in police reports,
many claimed they’d heard fireworks.
Odd in a cinema; the alternative
too grim to believe.
– Ryan Stone
First published in Poppy Road Review, February 2016
Ok.. I know I just said in the last post it was one of new favorite. Ummmmm, this is too! I’m serious… SooooooGood! 😉
Haunting and a little surreal but a really great story. I had to read it twice thanks to that twist at the end!
Thank you once more – so happy to receive feedback on what works and what doesn’t. I appreciate you taking the time 🙂
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Reading this reminded me of the cinema shooting in Aurora, Colorado in 2012 while ‘The Dark Knight Rising’ was being screened…It’s the unsaid in your piece that leaves the reader with an unsettling feeling…such a tragic loss of life….great write, my friend, filled with empathy.
Thank you 🙂 I did it using a painting app on my iPad.
My artistic side is limited to writing and playing the guitar 😉
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Oh.. this is powerfully sad, yet touchingly beautiful. You’ve skillfully arranged the events in these poetic lines to draw deep impressions deep inside our hearts and minds. I stand in awe at the talent you have to tell story after story leaving me awestruck.
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