Tag Archives: reliquary

A Thought’s Reliquary

Friday Flash 19 July, 2013

 

I.

He opened the notebook, the creak of cracking cardboard a writer’s melody.
“I see you have yourself a reliquary,” said Grandfather.

“Amen.”

 

II.

Proofs of holy writ, held within the ink of the pen, waited for the opening incantation. He paused and found no words. Was he a heretic?

 

III.

The first words were important and they rushed from the pen; not so much writing as scribbling random thoughts in search of a repository.

 

IV.

Shuffled sheets in a lectionary of unrequited (or unsent) love letters, parables of adolescent anxiety and beatitudes of pop song lyricists,

 

V.

Scratched sonnets and ambling discourses with a hip-hop feel competed for space between the lines. An epistolary apocryphal gospel at best.

 

VI.

He rested the pen between the pages in the crook of the hymnal’s spine, a genuflection, as the last sentence dried in the valley’s shadows.

 

VII.

As the cover of the notebook closed it murmured, sighed through paper exhalations, as one who held their breath waiting for the benediction.