Fifty Two Shades

Stories retold

Real, imagined and borrowed

Conversations replayed

Forgotten memories unearthed

In pensive silence

As I try to fathom the fleeting emotions

Of deepest sorrows and highest happiness

The lump in my throat, the deliberations

Go into labour

To deliver, shards of my soul

A cluster of words emerge

Meaningful to me

Meaningless without you, my reader

As you have your own understanding

I breathe character into my words

Letter by letter, taking shape

My pen (or keyboard?), my pal

The convulsions become stronger

With every breath, knowing no frontiers

Only to be constrained

By my diction or the lack of it

My accomplice drawing blanks

You may slight my efforts

The aches and the joys familiar

Quills have scratched them earlier

In the annals of mankind

The sun, the stars

The river and the rains

Flowers and the moon

Strike a different chord

A different song every time

Your mood, the stage

Every birth is a conception, a miracle of its own

The prompt midwife, StoryMirror

Comes to my aid

As I persevere to push

These fragile fragments, fifty two of them

Of you, of me, us, them, yet so personal

The challenge met

There are no winners or losers

There are only shades, fifty two shades