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