This week’s prompt for the 100 Word Challenge for Grown-Ups was to write a sonnet. The rules are the same as my “real” entry – “Daddy and the Dragon” – so I won’t repeat them here.
This is actually a second entry, of sorts. Since April 20 (4/20) is a special day for the marijuana counterculture, I decided to try my hand at a pseudo-love sonnet/ode to the herb. And I really hope that Shakespeare is not rolling in his grave over this albeit-well-meaning transgression.
“Smoke Break”
Caressing air, their lips part only just.
It’s smoke between, like kisses given sweet.
A blow, a breath, a quest for chastened lust.
Their mouths move close, but, ‘las, they never meet.
‘It’s hardly fair,’ he thinks, to come so close
To kiss those lips ’bout which he spends his dreams.
Though, this they have to share: a tiny dose
Of weed that lifts them up beyond their seams.
Escape, escape, to wide and open air.
It’s fleeting joy, a wond’rous herbal high.
But, just one moment, drift, they do, and share
This simple, almost-kiss, spoken in a sigh.
He pulls away. The fleeting moment’s gone.
But, lit in hand, there waits another one.
A frozen moment in time of two friends sharing a bit of herbal love. Not quite a love sonnet in the typical sense, but fun nevertheless.
Really enjoyed reading this Mayumi! 🙂
Thank you, Beth! I wrote it very quickly – on my train commute this morning! – but the image was just too much fun not to try and write down. 🙂
Awesome! Where do you work? 🙂
I work at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. I’ve got about a 25-minute daily commute on the train, so it allows me a little bit of time to muse, every day. 🙂
Oh, there’s a lot going on here to be sure, and it’s fantastic! The underlying want is made very clear as well as the aceeptance and joy of just being able to have this moment together at all. This accomplished a lot in only a few words!
Thanks! This was a fun prompt. I remember doing prompts with you more regularly, Chase. I miss those days! You have a long story I’ve been meaning to read all the way through. I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to do so! I will have to make time for it soon, though.