Poem into Story

The Poem​

I ache to hold you,
To absorb your grief,
To make it well.

I held you in the wordless night ,
My fingers tracing each tiny ear,
Wiping your tears and gathering up your frayed ends.
My eyes meeting yours and diving deep within.

Too big now to snuggle close,
I listen for one little sigh.


The Story


His face said it all. Instead of his usual blank expression, a well-practiced mask of macho indifference, his eyes were red and his lips alternately compressed and trembled.

"It's over. She left me. For good this time." And he looked away, stepping away from me, before I could even raise my arms to embrace him.

When he was not quite two, we had lost his lovey, a battered gray bunny, left behind at a motel and out of reach. I had held him and rocked him as he sobbed himself to sleep for one night after another. Two hours the first night, then shorter and shorter, until bedtime was just a snuggle and a sigh.


But a lost bunny is not a broken heart, and all the rocking in my power would not make things well again.


My response:


Gah! The poem is a piece of one I wrote several years ago and promptly forgot, until I found it in an old file. If it had been typed, and not handwritten and dated, I would have thought I had copied from a book. I have absolutely no memory of writing it, or what it was about. So it seemed a good candidate for today's prompt, to use a poem for inspiration. But this is not a good story, and I am not so keen on the poem, either.