A Life Betrayed

She lives the only life
she has ever known
inside someone else’s home

she wonders how she came to this
miles of fields and distance
a breeze touching her
now frail being

did someone leave her here
without her knowing and
will she wake one day
to find she’s dreaming

for she loved him so in her way
but was he a mirage or
just a ruse she wrote of
in her own knowing

before her body did betray
and stole her life
and youth

© September 2017 Renee Espriu

This is in response to Jamie Dede’s Wednesday Prompt. Read more at

“Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rainer Marie Rilke … and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

Christina's World

This painting rendered by artist Andrew Wyeth will never be able to access the mind of the young woman who gave rise to its’ inspiration. Christina Olson is the subject of this mysterious and haunting painting called ‘Christina’a World’.

**Being Unpolished and Knowing**

Like strands of pearls uncultured, unconnected
they lie strewn at your feet tantamount to words
discarded and useless unable to be linked as one
until something more refined comes along

she knows this every moment of every day speaking
is broken by hesitation, pauses and frustration
like diamonds rough from nature not yet expertly cut
by the jeweler’s hand in minuscule sharp detail

something like disparate but not really the same
just as peculiar is not exactly being self-serving
for who can say she is not the bowels of that same venue
as she compiles opinions based on incomplete knowing

she ultimately sees herself on the fringe of everything
and anything but peculiar touting her uniqueness as
that of shrewdly knowing but like that of the pearls
as that of the diamond she too can be unpolished

© May 2017 Renee Espriu

This is in response to Jamie Dede’s Wednesday Writing Prompt at https://jamiededes.com/2017/05/10/our-prison-of-lost-hope-a-poem-an-writing-prompt. Please do visit her site to read more of other poet’s responses. The photo below was taken from the Morgue File and Digitized by myself.

Unpolished