I Am Santo

When she didn’t show at work on that Monday and Tuesday, her boss Lorna called Elyse’s home and cell numbers with a lump stuck in her throat. There was no answer and there never would be again. One day sad Elyse was here and the next she was not. Lorna still thought of her often, hoping Elyse was somewhere in the sun, laughing and walking arm in arm with the man she’d always seemed ready for but never found. She hoped that odd presence that surrounded Elyse hadn’t won out, but she couldn’t help believing that it had, and that somehow Elyse’s disappearance was the thing everyone sensed on her, like an echo somehow sounding before the crack of a kill shot.

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(3/3) This is another collaboration with the lovely @instablond1. Her photo, my edit and #microfiction. The words poured from me during this collaboration. Hugely thankful to you, Bar, for the inspiration.

#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #writersofinstagram #poetry_addicts #literary_imagery1 #igpoets #its_awards #igpoems #mobileartistry #window #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #streamofconsciousness #portrait #melancholy #sad (at Elyse (Part 3 of 3))

She’d fantasize about the weight of a faceless stranger bearing down on her, the full hardness of him thick and long driving her to the edge, his strong hand clutching her throat as she gave in to the burning bliss of climax. Then she would lay naked in the gauzy orange of morning spilling through her shadeless bedroom window and hope someone was watching her, that someone had seen her work herself over and would climb through her window and join her, possessed by need for her. She was thirty-eight, beautiful and unmarried, her only sin being the loss of youth from the corners of her eyes and mouth. And at night she fought tears because Elyse knew that if she didn’t, the scent of her loneliness would only intensify, driving him away – her faceless stranger that would love and lust for her in equal measure, that would dispell the thick gloom haunting her like a ghost’s woe in the house of its murder. Elyse kept smiling, but her unhappiness was more and more obvious to those around her.

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(2/3) This is another collaboration with the lovely @instablond1. Her photo, my edit and #microfiction. The words poured from me during this collaboration. Hugely thankful to you, Bar, for the inspiration.

#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #writersofinstagram #poetry_addicts #literary_imagery1 #igpoets #its_awards #igpoems #mobileartistry #window #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #streamofconsciousness #portrait #melancholy #sad (at Elyse (Part 2 of 3))

She was not a widow, but Elyse earned that same kind of sympathy and avoidance wherever she went. She’d spend long hours staring in the mirror during her morning routine, applying lotions and makeup, trying to look and smell the part of everyone else around her. She wore kind dresses with necklines providing an easy view of her full chest, especially for the men that stood around her desk waiting for the elevator to take them down and away. They would have a glimpse and she’d grin, but rarely would they say hello. At lunch, Elyse smiled in sunlight, her blonde hair a sun-blossomed aura, and almost every day she wore skirts above her kneeline to display the efforts of her weekly three visits to the gym. The women’s magazines told her how to do everything from walking, to eating, to making men come in twenty new and exciting ways, and yet her nights were largely spent alone, her hands busy with the work of tapering her own desires.

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(1/3) This is another collaboration with the lovely @instablond1. Her photo, my edit and #microfiction. The words poured from me during this collaboration. Hugely thankful to you, Bar, for the inspiration.

#poem #poetry #poetic #igwriters #writersofinstagram #poetry_addicts #literary_imagery1 #igpoets #its_awards #igpoems #mobileartistry #window #creativewriting #fiction #flashfiction #writing #writer #story #shortstory #streamofconsciousness #portrait #melancholy #sad (at Elyse (Part 1 of 3))