It's Still Life

17 of 27 – Ruinlit: Courage Mistaken for Recklessness

Bounce: The 28th Glyph

It started with a bouncing ball — brushed her ankle, rolled off the curb into traffic — chased by a boy no taller than courage, his hair sunrise, his eyes bright as thawing ice.

Then came the car, chrome-gilled and blood-sleek, chaos’s twin — a blur that demanded the mind obey the heart, and the heart a deeper flame that licks bones clean.

Across the street, a chestnut tree — bark split, sap weeping amber — watched through heat-haze, old and unspeaking, yet still remembering blossom’s fire as the woman stepped off the curb.

She caught the boy, tucked him into her elbow like a loaf, and then came the sound — a thud like a stone dropped into deep water, followed by a peg of pain driven straight into her hip.

“Are you an angel?” he whispered, wide-eyed, and she — limping, breathless — said, “No. No, I am not,” though something older in her clenched like a fist and tasted of petrichor.

The chestnut stirred once, and somewhere — inkless or otherwise — a sentence burned across its bark: She does not descend with wings but lands on asphalt, bone-bright, blazing — and leaves no doubt what ink is made for.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “peg”.  Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.