One hundred words of Twitterfiction, inspired by a kiss.-M
How do ghosts kiss?
Ephemeral, whispy things always passing through doors and walls.
They must pass through each other, too, I think.
Like we have done, always passing through each other in the ether of words.
Does the contact of phantom lips allow spirits to merge;
intertwine as our words weave us through each other’s imagination?
And what if spirits, upon first touch, found instead substance and form?
Would they realize they were not in fact mere soul?
That there was flesh to press, warmth to feel?
Something more? Will we?
Our lips grow closer.
I hope.
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Very nice!
This is really good work.
You strike a beautiful balance between uncertainty and possibility. With that in mind, the final phrase “I finally cease wondering” is almost a disappointment. I don’t want to lose that exquisite uncertainty. Somehow it feels sexier to me, more poetic.
I think you have a good point. I usually don’t like to use the word ‘finally’ in general. I changed it. It might carry better now. I’ll look back at it in a while.
Yeah, (for me) that works better.
On the other hand, I think that the the final “I hope”, while visually appealing (gives the poem a nice shape), is already implied by your desire to kiss?
It is, but I think there’s still that shred of doubt and fear that it’s all phantasm. If the words don’t maintain that, then they’re not conveying what I want.
Not at all. The words convey that beautifully, the fear and the hope.
Heh. I trust your eye. A lot of these very short pieces can be written as either straight prose or a weird prose/poetry hybrid. I tweet them broken with entirely different meters constrained by 140 characters at a time, and when I edit them for a post here they invariably change shape and meter, and sometimes wording. I have no idea what realm of writing they truly inhabit. It’s another of those strange forms of writing enabled – or at least nurtured by – the web and social media.
I also change the arrangement of my tweeted work once it’s on the blog page, and I think that’s right. For each medium, there’s a perfect way for the piece to sit.
This poem leaves me wistful.
It makes me question whether the ‘not knowing’ is the very thing that is sharpening your desire. If you tear through that fragile fabric separating fantasy from reality, will it reveal something different than what you imagined? Would the intense intellectual attraction that you’ve described so beautifully carry over to the physical realm?
Maybe, maybe not…but I love thinking about it.