Destination

Another non-poetry post: this is a writer's craft assignment that I did, in which I had to write a narrative that plays off of an excerpt of music.
I chose "The Call" by Austin Wintory (0:00 - 2:39), a piece from one of my favourite video games.
This story is best experienced when listening to the music simultaneously.

A ray of sunlight pierces through the Traveler’s closed eyelids. She sits up slowly from her bed of sand, squints, and shields her eyes across the desert dunes to the horizon. The wind picks up, whimpering and whispering as it carries the white sand along its back towards her. Her fingers find their way to the compass around her neck as she watches the sand swoop into the air, smothering the sun that had greeted her in billowing clouds that advance slowly, ominously.

The dunes ripple in anticipation as the wind begins playfully singing through her hair and fluttering her robes. Swirling sand turns to whirling storms that rush towards her armed with rough swords. She crouches to brace herself against the now howling winds.

Her world is devoid of anything but the sandstorm. She is engulfed in the blindness of white, in the stinging pain of grains of sand pelting against her cheeks and her arms, in the triumphant cry of the wind deafening her.

The Traveler feels everything, and then nothing.

Senses return to her: cool air, earthiness, distant whistling wind. Her eyes flicker open, and she finds herself in a cave, the walls softly glowing white with a steady pulsing light. Paired with the sounds of the breeze, it was as if the cave was breathing. Strange rattling echoes around her, and she slowly stands up, glancing around her.

A passageway opens up to her, pulsing and shining with more intensity than the walls around her. Water drips down the unseen end of the corridor, tempting her to quench her throat and mend her cracked lips. She grasps her compass, and holding it in the palm of her hand, notes that the hand points straight ahead. Driven by the need for water and guided by the compass, she pads down the passageway.

With each inhalation, the glowing from the walls ever so slightly brightened, and as she exhales, the light dims. She becomes aware of the pattern, and as she experiments with the shortening and lengthening of her breath, she wonders if the cave is mimicking her, or if she’s mimicking the cave.

She turns the corner, and halts before a blinding wall of expanding and contracting light. A glance at her compass confirms that she must continue forward. Cautiously, she reaches out and brushes the glowing white light.

Wisps of light flows off of the wall and onto her skin; in its trace she feels a brusque wave of cold and fear, and then the sense of warmth and belonging, as if she was always supposed to be here. The light trails down her fingertips and weaves itself through her hair, slowly spreading and illuminating her skin until she too is glowing.

The Traveler’s eyes drift close as she lets the gentle yet terrifying whiteness embrace her, knowing she has finally reached her destination.

Forest

In English, we had to emulate a poet's collection and style by using the same characteristics (themes, tone, technique) as them.
I created 3 poems based on The Stag Head Spoke by Erina Harris, and I liked how they turned out!

I

I, the wolf, watch her--

she strews moonstones shining pewter starlight

through the velvet gloom that capes her,  

amidst the looming trees that bow humbly towards her

she shimmers, canines and claws glinting,

princess of the twilight forest and

mysteries that I fearfully love so dearly.

In the woods she looks through broken  

glass to crooked broken

backs of paths for the way out--

or perhaps in. 

II

The monster wakes, midnight wails slipping

through the breaking spines of  

twigs raking, raking, raking our skin

until we adorn bracelets of red

beads trickling down wrists where they

mix at hands held aching, pulsing of heartbeats

racing as we await yellow eyes to

follow us, quaking. 

III

Whispering aubade, butterflies alight on the

scrapped remains of a girl's petticoat

bleeding, seeping down bark

untouched, unslain. She licks her lips

of innocence tamed,

sweetness leaves in their mouths

hunger. The wolf girl and the girl wolf traipses

towards weeping dawn.

A sudden downpour
Two friends sitting in silence
Grief left unspoken.

"This is a Photograph of Me"

This is a short departure from your (not so) regularly scheduled poetry, but I thought I'd share my latest writing. I've been learning how to write memoirs in writer's craft, and the latest assignment was to write a short memoir based on a photo of myself (or part of myself) from this summer.

And so here, for your (maybe) enjoyment, is my first attempt at a memoir.

There’s something about being above the rest of the world that’s so exhilarating. Sitting in the trundling cable car and feeling the wind blowing through my hair felt freeing; I was away from kids and neon coloured rides screeching, the clashing food stalls fumes that are too close to each other, the crowd pushing and pulling. The glare and the blaze of yellow lights were now below my feet, balanced out by the night sky.

As I sat up there, rocking slightly in the breeze, I remembered my cousin telling me about the newest photo trend online she had heard of, where people would take photos of their feet from where they were standing. Out of all of the photo projects my cousin told me about, this one fascinated me: the idea of people leaving behind their temporary marks in moments they deemed important or beautiful enough to commemorate in a single photo.

Although the scene below my feet was less than picturesque, and the CNE was a tourist site that I was never really attached to, I suddenly felt inspired to do my own. I leaned back carefully, stuck out both of my feet, and snapped a quick shaky shot. The lift wobbled as I leaned back forward, and for one panicky moment before I grabbed the safety bar, I thought I was going to pitch forward.

I settled back into my seat and clicked the camera to playback mode. As I glanced at my camera screen, I was surprised to see how well the photo had turned out. There was the greyscale darkness of the night sky and my feet against the bright warm tones of the CNE. The bar that obstructed the lower part of the photo was more than just that: it was the safe barrier of being an outside perspective that I reached beyond to make an imprint. It was a captured moment of chiaroscuro that I couldn’t have imagined composing.

It’s always about the chiaroscuro: finding the balance between dark and light, between observation and participation, between suspension and falling. And it’s when I find that balance that I can leave my own marks behind.