Snowdrop 0.5: The Good Room

Snowdrop 0.5: The Good Room

Not officially part of NaPo as that's supposed to be all about new stuff, but while there's a hint of creativity still in my bones I might as well make best use of it. Hopefully there will be some new Snowdrop stuff appearing over the next 4 weeks, but for now you'll have to settle for a rewrite of an early section of the project.

This works much better now, and I am saying that myself ...

Snowdrop 0.5: The Good Room

Dark is the room. She reaches for the switch
and lights up clutter: a couch laden
with coarse cotton; a carpet of swirls
dating back decades; dust on the table
cracking veneer; cascades of vases.

          "Come here, my sweet. I'm sorry for those words -
          I miss her too, and sometimes I forget
          that you're not her; you have her look, absurd
          as that may seem to you, a silhouette
          to catch and shift me back to when she snuck
          away - I ache for her! Still, no time to mawk!"

There's memories here; moments of comfort
and laughter caught in the layers of grime.
She refutes their call, casts them away.
Going to to the window, she grasps the curtain
to shut out the moon. Her shadow ripples
between the folds of the faded drapes -
a wasp, long dead, winnows to the sill.

          "We'll pull some ivy from the fence out back
          and braid some berried holly through the stalks
          and pin the twigs along the walls, and Bert
          the Herder gave me mistletoe - he gabs
          romance, that man, but I know what he seeks.
          And once we've spruced the room we'll find a fir
          for potting, drag it here so you can wrap
          that tinsel round it: Christmas done on the cheap!"

The grin on the face of her Gran is crooked
and whole, and good, and the girl can't help
but to smile in return - a tacit ceasefire.