But the basement scared her at night.

As a foot is placed on the steps it creaks

In which she looks up to see if eyes lay on her

But all she sees is darkness

A hand grips the railing

Holding on tighter and tighter

Till her hands turn white.

The railing slippery as she slides her hand down further

With the sweat gathering in her palms

From the warm air in her body, against the cool breeze that blows against her.

Nights were even chillier than the morning

Where the sky is clear and below it there lies

The silhouette of things, bare trees

The remaining leaves are burnt to crisps.

Grey owls hoot in a sinister way.

Frogs croak and lurch their tongues far to get the next swarming fly.

It is silent among the hilltop with the peaked houses

Within one of the houses

Down below in the basement

Is the terrified girl

She had successfully made it down the stairs

And is now looking out the window

With the sky that is clear with no moon and no stars

The black, thin trees

And the grey owl among other things.

The girl takes up the courage

To walk slowly back on the wooden steps

Clutching the railing

Where she eventually lays in bed

In which thoughts crowd her small brain.

She tries to let go

And she does

To where she falls asleep.

This poem was inspired by a writer’s seminar author, Marge Piercy. I liked the emulation that I had responded from a piece of her poem. What I did was take a few lines from my writing and explained it further by either describing a scene such as the empty sky in the moonlight or the basement. I also decided to describe what was happening such as when the frog was lurching at flies or the hooting owl. Another area where I got my inspiration from was when in class we were told to describe three places such as the basement, an attic, and windows. I decided to describe the basement and windows in which the girl observes everything from. The reason I included the line, “In which they crowd her small brain,”was because the character is still trying to process the reality of night compared to the morning. In  this line I wrote about the night compared to the morning and they are drastically different in my poem’s setting. The girl eventually decides to let go of her thoughts as she falls asleep because sleep overpowers her thoughts and she soon forgets about what happens that night.

Image source:

http://rebloggy.com/post/scary-photography-creepy-stairs-yikes/26053864460