The Photographer

Today’s post is based on a writing prompt I shared in a previous Daily Drafts & Dialogues post. Keep reading to see what I wrote, and to access more writing prompts.

What I wrote below is based on the following writing prompt: Write a scene in which a photographer is capturing a shot that isn't easy to capture (i.e. underwater, wildlife, on the frontlines...)

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I slouch, exhausted, waiting for my relief. No attention is to be paid when the sirens are silent, the fluid front serene. The stars bright, portending souls asleep. And lost. For all the battles before and ahead, tallying the cost. Alone but together in tragedy, in triumph, amidst the cosmos and the rocks.

In their infinite wisdom, the precarious nature of the unnurtured bodies on the ground, expected to stay whole or rot. Tonight and beyond. While the formidable images captured dusted detail of all inner and outer demons fraught. Not the strategies and drills and commands and flashes haphazardly executed and fought.

Oh, a noise in the distance. 

Lightning crashing. 

Boots on the earth. 

Quaking. 

A thud. 

Then a crack.

Resistance.

Beaming.

One. Two. Three.

Click

Click

Click

Boom

The night sky holds the true north of the killing fields, much more than a temporary lens, for eternity. And will always keep secrets and confidences and stories of hope and joy in the same vein, fortunately. Or not.

None for me, I want to claim, a mere spectator of the madness, the bloodshed, the life, the aim. My narrative lies elsewhere, I want to say. But I know my presence in the metaphysical and muddy trenches of the here and now underneath the bow of released headlines and arrows of light. Will keep me up well past this night.

Into the heavens, I shoot. Then hear… the stars shooting back? My fortune is bleak, turned black, in a shower of tangible meteors and contradictory metaphors that cross the shore of my tent among the galaxies, forever my provisional residence. 

Floating and dreaming and screaming.

A cacophony of life. 

Rattle of death.

Relinquishing control. 

To spaces unknown.

Peace. 

Together. 

Alone.

There is no retreat with a zoom.

Three. Two. One.

Click

Click

Big 

Bang

Boom

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This draft ended up more poetic than I had originally envisioned, but I think I like how it turned out, as it seems to paint a literary/metaphysical/tangible scene with multiple layers. I might revise, edit, or add to it in the future. Stay tuned. 

Did you complete this prompt? If so, share what you came up with in a comment or chat thread so we can chat about it.

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© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton and Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Today’s Writing Prompt